
The 

Woman Healer 


By Evelyn Whitell 


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The Woman Healer 

By Evelyn Whitell 



‘ ‘ The work^jhat I do ye shall do also — 
and greater — 

Go forth and heal the sick.” 


— JESUS 


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Copyright, 1920 


Published by 

THE MASTER MIND PUBLISHING CO. 
618 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, Cal. 


©114570324 

JUN -I 192U 

?37y 


'vi.C I 


Dedicated to Alice Homer 


















PROLOGUE 


It was in the pine woods at Wisconsin. The song of 
life and health was everywhere. The soft, warm air 
vibrated with it. Myriads of insects buzzed their thoughts 
of it. The healthy grass in the sunburnt fields swayed 
with the joy of it. Butterflies, on golden, white and auburn 
wings, intoxicated themselves in its beauty. The incense 
of a thousand prayers of thankfulness rose to the Creator 
in the breath of newly opened flowers; in the rapturous 
songs of birds, in the whizz of the black locust and the 
shriek of the blue jay, in the air fragrant with the whiff of 
pines, fields of clover and meadows of swaying wheat. All 
creation sang together, and the woman at the foot of the 
maple tree listened to the song, but her heart was 
irresponsive to its beauty. The sunshine of the scene was 
blurred to her. The sweet sounds of the world around 
were drowned in the uglier sounds of those whose life was 
tragedy, not song. 

“Oh, God!” she cried, bitterly, stretching out her arms 
towards the soft blue smiling skies; “why do you keep so 
silent in the Heavens? Why have you made this lovely 
earth in mockery to all our pain? God of love, does nothing 
reach you? The sobs of broken-hearted women, the groans 
of toil-worn men, the cry of hungry little children. God, I 
would lay my all upon the altar, I would give my life into 
Thy hands, take every burden laid upon my shoulders, 
without murmuring; I would be weary, spent, and heavy- 
laden, if I could lift this crushing load from the tired 
shoulders of a suffering world. God, use me, speak to me, 
show me the way.” 

No response came. She had opened her eyes for the 
vision, but only the same sweet scene of life ; the same blue 
Heavens in which the sunlight smiled, looked down upon 
her. 

The very peace and beauty was a mockery. She had 
asked for bread and she had got a stone. She rose to her 
feet suddenly and flung back her hair from her heated face. 

What was the good of it all, this praying into silence? 
This crying to an invisible God in a metallic Heaven? She 
had been like a child calling on a deaf parent for g^uidance; 
a crushed insect in the sand looking up into the face of 
man for help. 

But still, as if unwilling to resign, once more she fell 


upon her knees. She could not yet give up that warm and 
throbbing hope within her heart that God would throw 
His light upon the way. 

“My God,” she cried again, “you have given me a strong 
body; you have given me health, vitality, and power, a 
soul that cries out for expression, a heart that beats in 
sympathy with all the world. Then with your own voice 
you have called me like you did Samuel of old, but why 
have you barred my way against the work I want to do?” 

“Why?” repeated a voice so close beside her that she 
started. 

The speaker was a man of strong and powerful build, 
with a head well poised upon gigantic shoulders, and limbs 
suggesting in their supple strength the power of a Her- 
cules. The flash of brilliant sunlight through the trees 
which had parted, struck on her eyes like lightning and 
made it for the time impossible to see his face. 

“Why?” he repeated, “that one small word, round the 
axis of which this little planet whirrs. Why? we ask 
nature; why? we call to the winds; why? we cry to God, 
while the still small voice within is waiting with the answer. 
If out of the silence of the night that voice has spoken, 
and in response you have laid your greatest wish upon the 
altar, then be satisfied that the fire will descend. God did 
not call you through an open door to slam it in your face. 
Stand and await no outward vision. Know that your wish 
is accepted by Him, and then, led by the Spirit, go forth 
to do your work.” 

“My work,” she answered; “how gladly would I do 
whatever work God gave into my hands. I look around 
the suffering world; I am so impotent to help. My work? 
Where shall I find it? Where shall I begin? The cry of 
humanity calls from every side. Everything beneath the 
sun, carrying the mark of suffering, stabs my heart.” 

He looked at her for a moment with something of the 
same light in his eyes that the Christ might have had 
when he gazed on the young man who, from his youth 
up, had kept the commandments. 

“What is this force which sways you thus?” he asked; 
“this power which pushes you forward with unseen hands? 
this subtle something which you cannot hold, and cannot 
master, which strikes you in the back when you stand still, 
and drags you on, you know not whither? What was it 
drew the Saviour of the world to earth? What was it 
shook the silent Heavens? It was the electrical force going 
up in the cry of a darkened world for a leader, for a 


Gospel more tender than that thundered from Sinai. The 
great unconscious prayer of a million hearts. The King 
feasting at his banqueting table. The Empress pulling 
aside her heavy ruby curtains, and pondering on the 
silence of the stars. The sufferer on her couch of pain, the 
savage gazing with unlightened eyes upon the grandeur of 
a storm. It was this same power of attraction which 
pushes the leaders of the world out to their work, which 
cracked the Heavens asunder and let the Divine descend 
into our midst. 

Then did He ask, where is my work? How can I help 
this great, vast world of suffering humanity? Why Kave 
you placed me in this narrow compass when millions of 
souls beyond my reach are crying to me in the darkness? 
No, He gave His message to the little world around Him, 
awaiting no results and never looking forward to the 
glory of a wider sphere. He knew that God would bear 
the message where it was most needed. That not a hungry 
soul would close their hands unsatisfied for what He gave. 
Why, then, knowing this, need we cry and cry to God to 
send us forth to help humanity? If we have heard His 
voice, even though our limbs are crippled and our faith is 
weak, we need no earthly props. Like the lame man at 
the beautiful gate of the temple, we can arise, we can go 
forth.” 

The girl was leaning forward eagerly. Her chin was 
resting on her hands, her eyes were riveted upon his face. 

“But how can I begin my work where God has placed 
me?” she asked, gently, “in this little town where my 
parents and my grandparents are living? Where every 
person whom I meet has known me since childhood, known 
all my faults and limitations, all my follies, where criticism 
would meet me on all sides?” 

And did not Christ begin His work amongst the people 
He had lived amongst since childhood? Did He pause to 
fear criticism and scorn? If you are looking to yourself 
for help alone, then your prop will fall beneath you. But 
if you are looking into the eyes of Him who healed, and 
drawing from His purity like refreshing draughts of water 
from a well, then you will feel no criticism, no scorn; you 
will go forth with the vibration He carried that even the 
hem of His garment made whole. Remember it was after 
He had spent the night in prayer upon the mountains with 
His Father, that He was able to walk upon the waters, 
thrilling with that same magnetic force which commanded 
the elements and silenced the voice of the storm. 


What is the power of the human mind before the uncon- 
querable spirit which infinite love is guiding and directing? 
God has called you. Begin your work this day; let the 
stones of criticism fly around you; keep your eyes ever on 
the vision; on one voice alone — the voice of the guiding 
spirit, and you shall go forth “conquering and to conquer.” 

The sudden conviction came with a sweet peace to the 
girl, a peace which ran like electricity through every limb. 
The stranger arose and, coming forward, spread out his 
hands as if in benediction over her. He had parted the 
boughs of the trees again, and was standing with the rays 
of the noonday sun full upon him. For a moment her eyes 
grew dazzled by the brightness — the infinite beauty of his 
face. A sudden wind swayed the flowers and grasses 
backwards and forwards. The parted boughs fell on each 
side, forming, for a moment, in the sunlight, the vision of 
a conquered cross. 

4 ! 4 : 4 : 4 : 4 : 4 > 


The breath of morning was soft and even as a sleeping 
child’s. Dawn was slowly breaking over the mist-drenched 
hills, and falling in shafts of grey and silver through the 
dark green of the pines. Out of the silmce a bird called. 
Slowly the sun ascended in the Heavens, blushing like a 
bride beneath her silvery veil. A wind blew softly from 
the West, tossing the branches of the trees, shaking the 
dew from the sprinkled flowers. Then the figure sleeping 
at the foot of the cottonwood tree opened her eyes and 
smiled at the birth of a new day, as gladly as a young 
mother would smile on her first-born child. 

The soft breeze kissed her gently on both cheeks. The 
juice from the pines fell on her face like a baptism to life. 
The darkness of the night had passed, and in every tree, 
in every flower, in every blade of grass she saw a resur- 
rection. 

The frogs croaked in an off-lying field. The crickets 
and the katydids made the most of their song of pleasure. 
A robin burst into a rapturous carol of praise. 

She stretched out her young arms to the Heavens. She 
felt the glow of health pulsating through her. She felt 
the strength of her unused powers. The light of Him who 
walked upon the water was in her eyes. Her life work 
stretched before her in one bright vision, and, led by the 
Spirit, she went forth to meet it. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER 1 

T hey call her ‘The Woman Healer,’ ” said the hostess 
of the garden party, in response to the question 
asked by one of her guests, “She comes from that 
out-spoken land of freedom — America. She has only been 
in the village two weeks, but already she has turned the 
heads of a bevy of sensible English women.” 

The eyes of Leval Irving, the artist, followed in the 
direction of the figure. He was interested in everyone who 
dared to be original, and the fact that a woman would 
leave the convention of the table to romp with a bunch of 
happy children on the grass pleased him immensely. 

“So that is the Woman Healer,” he said. “I have heard 
of her doctrine. I like the idea of a land where there is 
no pain, sickness, nor sorrow; that’s what I’ve been search- 
ing for ever since I came to this planet.” 

“Long will you be in search, I fear,” said the soft, mel- 
low voice of Penelope Hershall. 

Leval turned to her, smiling. Her voice seemed too 
womanly and sweet to contain the ring of bitter sarcasm. 

“You don’t believe it would be possible, do you?” he 
asked. 

“I?” she responded, “No; I think I have lived too long 
and seen too much to believe in the children’s angels. Such 
doctrine is all right for one who has always walked on 
stars and flowers, but for those who have faced the rough 
edges of a commercial world, for those who have seen life 
with a clear eyesight, a more practical doctrine has to be 
written.” 

“But the strange part of it is that Mrs. Thorpe has 
weathered the gale as much as any of us,” said one of her 
friends. “She has sailed out of deep water like a beautiful 
ship with sails unripped by the storm. She seems to have 
only one object in life, and that is to make everyone happy 
and glad.” 

“She is coming this way,” said Leval suddenly. “If 
there’s all this power in thought that she claims, we must 
have sent out a ‘forceful attraction.’ ” 

The figure was striking enough in its personality to 
draw everyone’s attention. Tall and of beautiful physique, 
she walked with the easy dignity and self-confidence of a 
conqueror. Her clear eyes looked from right to left. They 


10 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


were inviting eyes. Eyes which made the children rush 
towards her, the sick hold out their hands, and even those 
who denied their beauty, smile. 

“I should think you must feel very hot,” said the hostess 
in the tone of pity we are always using to each other when 
the generous sun gives us more warmth than usual. 
“You’ve been racing with those children all afternoon; did 
not it make you awfully tired?” 

“No,” she replied, “why should it do so? Why should I be 
more tired than those happy little children? Those little 
ones saw nothing but the brightness of the sunshine on 
the flowers and on their pretty frocks. They realized 
nothing but that it was to be a day of perfect pleasure and 
of games, of strawberries, of frolic and ice cream, and they 
gave themselves right up to it, and so did I.” 

Her merry laugh incited laughter. The guests began to 
feel that there was something they had missed. 

“Oh, Mrs. Thorpe is never tired,” said the hostess; “she 
is never even ill. The good things all come knocking at her 
door. She is indeed a woman to be envied.” 

“The good things never crowded to my door until I 
opened it for them,” she answered, “until I flung back the 
screens and stretched out my hands to grasp them; they 
all passed me by. There was a time when I did not even 
wish to have them. My house was too chock full of ugly 
thought, I had been wronged in this way, I had been 
wronged in that. All the disagreeable things of life were 
given to me. All the bad luck came my way. My messages 
of sick and ugly thought went out each hour and they 
brought me back a harvest in return. For twenty years I 
suffered so, and then the light dawned on me and I let it 
in. I let the purifying wind blow down my gardenful of 
weeds, and in their place the roses grew.” 

“So you believe we are responsible ourselves for sorrow 
and ill luck?” Leval asked. “Surely that is hard lines, is 
not it?” 

“Not if there is the antidote,” she answered. “Do we 
sit and grumble at the swarms of flies in our house while 
we are keeping decayed fruit there to breed and attract 
them?' We must get rid of the bad fruit first if we would 
cast out the flies. We must get rid of every ugly thought 
in our hearts if we are to make it a room for beautiful 
spirits.” 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


11 


The guests looked at her wonderingly. They had never 
any of them been so plainly spoken to, but they did not 
resent it. 

“You can all of you rule your own houses to perfection,” 
she continued; “you are all of you queens there, but which 
of you can rule that inward house, that inward kingdom, 
the most important house of all? You who boast your 
freedom, are, all of you, more or less slaves to something. 
You are all of you really in harness, although you would 
deny it if it were put to you.” 

She paused, but as none spoke, she continued. “Into 
everyone’s hands is given the power of government, but 
whether man grasps that power or lets it run like sand 
through his fingers, remains with himself. Every man has 
his kingdom; it is his inheritance at birth, and he may 
use or abuse it, be king of it, servant, slave to it, be yoked 
like a horse and driven by his subjects or have every 
subject at his command, just as he makes his own choice. 
So long as he lives he can not shake off the responsibility 
of government nor the knowledge that his kingdom is a 
separate island, a solitary star in a studded firmament, and 
from that kingdom must go forth the exports which will 
affect the world like a storm or sunshine affects the face 
of nature. 

“Who are the Kings and Emperors of the world? Not 
those who look from their castle windows upon their far- 
reaching lands; not those whose kingdom is a kingdom in 
name only; not those whose presence is bowed down to and 
the sight of whose carriage is watched for by a thousand 
expectant eyes. The greatest kings are those who have 
lived upon the smallest island; those whose subjects in 
full control have enabled them to think calmly and act 
wisely; those whose names have never blazed among the 
number who are supposed to have given the world her 
firm foundation; those whose thoughts, cast like seeds on 
the air, have been carried by the birds and borne by the 
winds across the country and taken root in flowers which 
gladdened the eyes, and in trees the fruit of which has fed 
mankind.” 

“Then you believe,” asked Penelope, “that if we had once 
directed our thought force aright, all things would be 
possible?” 

“Why not?” asked Mrs. Thorpe, and there was such 


12 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


conviction in her tone that everyone listening found them- 
selves repeating the question: “Why not?” 

“Just imagine you see the great force by which the world 
is swayed,” she continued; “myriads of telegraphic wires, 
fine and sensitive as a spider’s web, shooting off in a million 
different directions. The world revolves on its axis, but 
the wires tremble and the earth trembles like with an 
earthquake. Such is the unmastered force which man has 
yet to master, the armed giant we are yet to make use of, 
the giant whose powerful hand rests on that axis, turning 
it from day to day. Steam, electricity, radium were all 
giants we were afraid of until we had got them into 
harness, and then they helped the world. But the greatest 
giant of all is yet as uncontrolled, and while he is, the 
world will be a world of unrest. Our earth is ruled by 
law. God let nature develop herself into a paradise, but 
man made her into a mass of quivering nerves. With man, 
the last and greatest of God’s creations, came the strongest 
power of all: the power of thought. Man took this power 
lightly; he was pleased for it to be his master; he calmly 
handed over the reins of government and allowed himself 
to be driven in whatever direction thought might choose to 
go. And when the woman came, thought exercised the 
same power on her and on her children, until soon com- 
plete mastery was his and he became the ruling force of 
the world, a force which nature trembled with like a 
sensitive child, a power so hypnotic that man unarmed 
became like a baby in its grasp. 

Nature affects human nature, just as much as human 
nature affects nature; it is a giving and returning, from 
day to day, and as we give, so we receive. Fear, one of the 
most forceful of thought subjects, is allowed to walk at 
large like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. 
He comes like a cyclone, a telegraphic force from a 
thousand minds, the very earth trembles with his footsteps 
and the walkers are thrilled and afraid of they know not 
what. The weak ones put the feeling down to nerves, the 
strong to coming illness or depression, but few can analyze 
it as an unmastered force. 

What is the first thing that a baby feels when entering 
into life? Joy, contentment, happiness, a sense of mother’s 
love and comfort? No; it feels the quiver of the earth’s 
vibration, and the first movement is one of nerves, a start 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


13 


of fear. The sensitive little body is full of magnetic force, 
and as the needles fly to the magnet, so the forces ruling 
most strongly envelop that little new-born child whose 
unformed mind is solely dependent on those surrounding it. 

Thought is ruled by the law of gravitation, Man calls 
it fate or destiny, but fate revolves on the axis turned by 
the hand of man alone. Man is the master of his own 
body, the master of his own destiny, the king of his own 
kingdom, and so long as he controls his emotions, appetites, 
desires, so long as he acknowledges nothing but good, and 
closes his doors on every appearance of evil, so he controls 
his fate, for in return he gets nothing but what he sent 
out. The magnet is only the magnet, for steel — wood, 
paper, china, may be placed by it without the slightest 
effect. 

It is only when we have put this great force into control 
that we shall tread the earth as gods. Peter saw his 
Master walk on the sea and he realized that he could do 
the same, but at the sight of the black waves heaving on 
every side of him, his steps failed and the waves vibrated 
with his fear, and the electric force of the moment’s faith 
was shattered, and but for the upholding faith of his 
Master he would have sunk. 

Newton discovered the law of gravitation, but only one 
side to that law; much remains to be learned on the 
gravitation of thought. We gravitate towards the altar 
on which our whole life has been placed. Man is taught 
that death is in store for him one day, his eyes are fixed 
upon it as an inevitable end to life on earth, which may 
come sooner, may come later, but anyway is positive to 
come. The child is taught to believe this as soon as it 
begins to realize the joy of living. We must not look to 
this world, but to the one to come. This is the shadow, 
the other the reality. We must live outside this world, 
select our friends with care. We must teach people how 
to die, rather than how to live, and preach the gospel of 
eternity rather than that of time. 

Age is inevitable, they tell us. The lot of man is three- 
score years and ten, and mighty grateful he has to be if he 
can stretch those years out to fourscore. In his prime he 
realizes that the winter of his life is close at hand and, 
sighing over the vision of old age, he daily gravitates 
towards it. He works with less inspiration, and those 


14 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


around him, counting his years, declare: “He is getting on.” 
And so old age comes pell-mell on the top of him and he 
resigns himself to what must be, while the eagle, with 
greater scientific knowledge, soars aloft, renews his youth 
and teaches him a lesson which he will not learn. 

Sickness is positive, we have been told. The mother 
realizes it as she holds her baby in her arms. The baby 
draws it in with the milk from the mother’s breast. Disease 
must be warded olf by every kind of physic, must be kept 
like an enemy at bay, but it is the birthright of all who 
live. The little child is protected on every side against it, 
yet the whole of mankind is fretted into it by the quivering 
nerves of anxious people acting like a giant force on every 
frame. 

The woman feels sickness in every breath when the 
cutting wind pierces through her furs. She feels it when 
drenched by unexpected rain, when she takes off her damp 
shoes in front of the fire, and sickness feels its own power, 
and along the electric lines fly the microbes of cold, and in 
direct response, settle upon the waiting lungs. 

Who are the successful men of the world? The men 
who have no eye for failure, who recognized success in 
every breath they drew, who through giving no backward 
glance magnetized success towards them. Who thought 
success when they opened their eyes to the daylight, who 
thought it as they lay down in the dark. Men who held 
aloft the lamp of health so that its brightness cast a ruddy 
glow on their faces and a sparkle into their eyes. 

Where your heart is, there is your treasure also. With- 
out vision the nations perish. If man once learned to 
govern this power of thought, there would be no shameful 
waste of it, but every good dream would become a reality. 
If love to mankind were the ruling keynote, there would 
be no battlefields, no starving crowds, no pitiful cry for 
work, no hungry children. If the world were swayed by 
the highest ideals, there would be no need of conversions. 
We should have no sickness of body, no sickness of soul. 

Men play at ruling; they set up their kings and emperors 
as a child sets up his tin soldiers, but theirs is not the 
power to sway the world. Until each man has realized 
that he is a king himself, and possesses a kingdom of his 
own, our world will vacillate and sway. The coming of all 
good things is without ourselves. When we are able to 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


15 


govern our own kingdom, then we shall get the kingdom of 
peace, where the lion shall lie down with the lamb and a 
little child shall lead them, because then we shall all be 
simple-hearted as children. There will be no serpent in 
our Eden, no sickness, no death. We shall let in the light 
and the darkness will go like a dream.” 

She ceased speaking. A child’s voice had called her, and 
in another moment she had joined the little ones among 
their daisy chains. 


16 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER II 

Mrs. Thorpe walked along the rose-scented lanes, her 
heart in tune with the singing birds. 

Oh, the lovely, lovely weather, the skies the gentle blue, 
the great silvery clouds, the soft, caressing sunshine, the 
air alive with Summer’s music. 

She stopped at the gate of one of the little white-washed 
cottages and kissed both hands to a group of happy 
children on the grass. 

“That’s her as came to live in Mat Tregowan’s house,” 
said Dolly Linden, a big-eyed, flaxen-haired child, in a 
mysterious whisper. “No one’s lived in Mat’s house since 
he died, for they said his ghost walked ’round and ’round 
the garden, groaning all night long. But when that lady 
came she said she weren’t afreard of nothing, but if Mat’s 
ghost walked the garden she’s teach him that he ought to 
do something better; and she’s made the house just fine 
inside and got lace curtains tied with blue up at the 
window, and you never saw the like of how she’s made 
that garden grow.” 

“She gave me a big bunch of her flowers,” said curly- 
headed Mary, the innkeeper’s child, “and she said that 
flowers grew for people that loved ’em, and I said my ma 
didn’t like flowers, and then she spoke kind of cross like, 
but her face was smiling. ‘Don’t you say that,’ she says; 
‘you carry those flowers home and put ’em right in water 
and they’ll bring a message of love to your mother. Drop 
a little kind thought into every rose bud and the sweetness 
is sure to reach her.’ Well, I took those flowers and put 
’em in my mug and, sure enough, my ma didn’t throw ’em 
out, but I saw her sniff ’em more’n once.” 

“She ain’t a good lady, anyway,” spoke a boy’s voice 
from the distance; “the minister don’t like her, and my pa 
don’t like her neither, and we’re never to go near her 
garden nor touch any of her flowers.” 

“Much you know about it,” answered Mary; “take no 
notice of him, girls; he’s only Olaf Guthra’s kid.” 

The boy’s face flushed angrily, his small and dirty hand 
tightened on that of his little sister. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


17 


“Only Olaf Guthra’s kid.” How bitterly those words 
had struck into his heart before today. 

He picked up a stone as if to throw it, but he was a 
manly little fellow in spite of the “only,” and he decided 
in a moment that fists were a fairer form of fight. He 
thrust his little sister aside and fearlessly advanced 
towards the girls. 

“Look ye here,” he said, intensely, “you may think 
yourself lots better than me, Mary Hawthorne, ’cause your 
father can afford to keep a swell house with a sign over 
the door and make folks drunk five times a day; you may 
think ’cause you’ve got big pots of geraniums outside your 
window that your mother’s a somebody — but I’ll let you 
know one thing, that if I am only Olaf Guthra’s kid, I 
know how to fight.” 

The girls, who were quite unprepared for this onslaught 
and a little afraid of the boy, took refuge in laughing and 
went walking away with their arms around each other, 
whispering together, and now and again casting glances 
behind. 

“What did they say to ye, Eric?” asked his father, as 
he came ’round the corner and found the boy muttering 
and frowning heavily after the retreating figures. 

“They said I was only Olaf Guthra’s kid,” he answered, 
with a catch in his voice. 

Olaf lifted his little girl into his arms. “Why didn’t 
you fight ’em for it?” he asked. 

“ ’Cause they were only girls,” he replied, “and if I’d 
ha’ licked, I’d ha’ .killed ’em, that’s all.” 

Olaf was silent a while. “How did the quarrel begin?” 
he asked, presently. 

“They were praising that lady you told us about. She 
went past and kissed her hand to ’em all, and I said: ‘She’s 
no good,’ and they just cheaked me for it, so there.” 

“You ought to ha’ fought ’em,” was all Olaf said, but at 
the same time his eyes wandered restlessly in the direction 
of the place he had been warned against, and his thoughts 
were on the face he had seen a few minutes before in the 
lane. 

****** 

The cottage which had remained empty so long on 
account of the ghost of a departed spirit being supposed to 
inhabit it, stood at the entrance to the village. The old- 


18 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


fashioned garden, the thatched roof, the whitewashed walls, 
had fascinated Mrs. Thorpe the moment she saw it, and 
she had at once determined that it and no other should be 
her home. 

“If this poor spirit has lived alone so long,” she said, 
laughingly, to the villagers, “then it is time he had 
company;” and to the great dismay of everyone, she had 
the house arranged for habitation and slept in it alone 
for the three first nights, declaring with a bright face 
every morning that she had never slept better nor dreamed 
more sweetly in her life. 

Now, to the joy of all who wished her well, she was no 
longer alone. It caused a great fiutter of excitement in 
the village when the news went ’round that the foreign 
lady had taken “blind Peggy” into her home, and what 
was still more astounding, had given out the news that 
she was not blind and never had been. Now the fact was 
well known that Peggy had been blind from her birth, but 
she had been blessed with good parents, who had taught 
her every necessary accomplishment. She had, indeed, the 
practical insight of two. Her power of touch enabled her 
to scrub and clean and even cook — but none of these things 
were known to Mrs. Thorpe when she had opened to her 
the doors of her home. She had seen light in the darkness 
for this poor woman, and in return she had got service 
invaluable. 

“So Peggy Lee is giving it out that she was never blind, 
is she?” said Sarah Emerson, a renowned village gossip, 
when she listened to the news from the lips of her friend. 
“Maybe that foreigner is dull enough to believe her, but I’ll 
tell her another tale.” 

Mrs. Thorpe listened to this tale quietly and without 
interruption. Then she spoke very gently, with a trifle of 
sadness in her voice. 

“And do you think God put a happy-minded child into 
this world never to behold its beauties? Do you believe it 
was His will that a little one should never look upon its 
mother’s face? You have been thinking this hard thought 
of God too long. Now I want you to turn right ’round 
and think another. I want you to believe God always 
willed that she should see, that He never meant to close a 
door of beauty on any of His children. It is with our 
human hands we close these doors and hold them fast. I 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


19 


want you to realize with me each day that God wills that 
she should see the lovely earth He has created, the Summer 
sunshine, the flowers, the laughing brook, the wayside 
moss. I want you to realize, too, that the veil before her 
eyes can be rent asunder, and assuredly your faith will 
give her sight.” 

The woman went home silent. She said no more against 
the theory, but she watched the progress from day to day. 

As the afternoon was so warm, Peggy had laid the tea 
things underneath the trees. There was only one thing 
which had not pleased her in this newly-found friend 
whose every step she worshiped, and that was the scarcity 
of meals which she required. It was mystery to her how so 
big and healthy a specimen of humanity could have lived 
and thrived so well in a country where they only ate three 
times a day and went to bed without their supper. 

“Can’t they afford to eat more?” she asked, “or is it 
that they’re frightened of the dishes! I always heard 
how all the millionaires came from that big place, but 
they would not bring their money to our little island; they 
were too afraid they’d get pushed off into the sea.” 

“In Rome, do as Rome does,” is a wise motto for every 
traveler so long as it does not greatly interfere with his 
convenience. 

“In Rome be tactful with its people — respectful of its 
customs,” was the motto Mrs. Thorpe had taken, and now, 
greatly to Peggy’s delight, she no longer refused the 
morning lunch nor the nine o’clock supper. There was, 
fortunately, a big open window through which she could 
deposit half the teapotful of tea and plenty of birds in the 
garden to appreciate the overflow of cake. 

Peggy’s face shone at the sound of her mistress’s footstep 
and she came forward gladly to meet her with both hands 
outstretched. 

“I’ve laid the tea out of doors and I’ve got the kettle 
boiling and the muffins hot on the stove,” she began, “for 
I just knew you’d be wanting it bad after being among 
that proud, stuck-up set at the Hall.” 

“Now, Peggy, hush,” corrected Mrs. Thorpe, as she 
scattered the flies from the eatables with a shake of her 
gloves. “How can you expect the spirits of love to sur- 
round you when you are criticizing the thoughts of God in 
that way?” 


20 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


“If you’re calling those folks you’ve been among this 
afternoon the thoughts of the Almighty, then He’s got 
some queer thoughts,” answered Peggy, as she handed her 
the tea. “Now doesn’t that taste a long way better than 
any of those fancies you got this afternoon?” 

“Everything you prepare tastes good to me,” Mrs. 
Thorpe replied, as she delicately touched the brim of the 
cup with her lips; “how could it help but do so when there 
are so many smiles dropped in?” 

Peggy folded her hands with a satisfied idea of her own 
importance. 

“Did they say much about me down at the Hall, mam?” 
she asked. “You know they all think I’ll not get my eye- 
sight, but I’d like to surprise them.” 

“And you will surprise them, Peggy, only you must not 
look at it too much from the sensational standpoint, but 
in the hopes that the works of God may be made manifest 
to all. Is not the sun setting beautifully tonight?” 

She asked the question abruptly, and Peggy’s sightless 
eyes turned towards it. 

“It hurts me,” she said, suddenly looking away. 

“You feel the thrill of sensitiveness to the light which 
is going to pierce right through the darkness,” said Mrs. 
Thorpe. 

“It was at even that He healed the sick,” replied Peggy. 

“Thy touch has still its ancient power,” said Mrs. Thorpe 
softly. And then she took the woman’s hands within her 
own and they sat silent. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


21 


CHAPTER III 

It was the morning of little Pearl Harrison’s operation. 
The village gossips discussed it together as they filled their 
buckets at the crystal water of the well. 

Jack Brown had arrived with the latest news from the 
cottage and his wife sighed deeply and wiped her tear- 
dimmed eyes. 

“Poor thing,” she said gently; “she’ll never live through 
it, but it’ll be a happy release for her after her suffering, 
and bless her, she’ll never go better. Her parents will miss 
her, very like, but she’ll be safely landed, for she’s no 
sins to atone for like us poor folks who have had to commit 
’em many a time without meaning.” 

“Well, I’m sure parents have nothing to fret over when 
they lose their children,” answered Grandma Atkins, as 
she lifted the well-filled bucket in her hard, brown hands. 
“One may fight and work and strive to bring up a family, 
and what does one get for it in return? Bless ’em, they 
pull at your skirts when they’re little, but when they are 
big they pull at your heart.” 

“I’ve never been given a family, thank the good Lord,” 
replied Mrs. Hadley. “One girl was enough for my taste. 
I brought her up well and taught her to work, but when 
she got over age she came for her wages. She asked to be 
paid for doing all I had taught her to do. I might have 
sent in my own bill, but I didn’t. I gave her the wages 
and she spent them on clothes, and she’d grumble at me 
that the wash was so big, when more’n half o’ it was her 
own things. Then when I was sick and most needed her 
help, she’d chosen to marry, and work for some man she’d 
picked up, instead of her mother. So what have folks to 
regret when the good Lord sends them no childer? You’ve 
just got to wear yourself out in bringing them up for other 
folks’ use. What good are they, now, when all’s said and 
done?” 

“Aye, what good are they, now?” repeated a toil-worn 
woman. “I was wishing my poor Ophelia had gone the 
same way as that child.” 

“Ophelia don’t get any better then?” asked Mrs. Brown. 

The woman shook her head. “Nay, she’ll never be any 
better,” she answered. “I have prayed to the Lord to take 
her before she gets older, for there’s a peck of trouble for 


22 


FHE WOMAN HEALER 


me and my husband so long as she lives, poor thing.” 

Grandma Atkins shook her head and set off with the 
buckets she was still holding, when the toot — toot of a 
motor made everyone turn round. 

“It’s that fine lady that’s come to live in Bob Tregowan’s 
cottage,” cried Jack. 

Mrs. Thorpe’s smiling face turned towards them. They 
were all her friends, though she did not yet know their 
names. 

There was something in her smile which made them 
smile back, and caused Jack to give his hair a quarter of 
an inch of sunshine by half raising his hat. 

“Aye, she’s bonny,” said Grandma, putting down her 
buckets of water and laying her hands on her hips. “It’s 
queer how the Lord favors some folks, and ill uses others, 
when He gives ’em their children. He must ha’ been 
mighty pleased with that creature’s mother to send her a 
daughter like that.” 

“And they say she’s just as good as she looks,” replied 
Mrs. Hadley, “but she never enters the church, and the 
minister don’t like it. He calls her a false prophet dressed 
in fine clothes and he tells us we’re not to have anything 
to do with her beliefs. Of course, it’s all right for Peggy. 
What would she have done, left without parents? One can't 
wonder if she does make up a bit of a lie. She’s fallen on 
her feet as clean as a cat, and it’s a good home for her, 
and the Lord will forgive her for making believe she can 
see, for He’s given her a hard enough life, poor body.” 

“But we can’t keep our children away from her house,” 
declared Mrs. Brown. “She’s that fond of ’em and they 
are of her. She’s got a big library all full of books and 
she gives ’em fruit and cake in the garden and tells ’em 
such tales as I never could think of if I sat down all day. 
They’re always gathering flowers to take her, and Peggy, 
you know she’s a bit of a master, and she wants to throw a 
lot of ’em out. ‘Don’t come up the steps with your dirty 
boots and them flowers,’ she says; ‘just take ’em away; we 
don’t want dandelions and grass.’ Then the lady runs up 
and stops her: ‘Oh, Peggy!’ she says (not a bit cross like, 
but just very determined) ; ‘you must not do that; we can’t 
afford to throw love out of doors’ — and she picks them all 
up and puts every little bit of grass in water, for she says 
it was love that prompted the little hands to gather ’em 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


23 


and the little feet to run with ’em here, and that love’s just 
as good to me as the sunshine. ‘Better a dirty doorstep 
than a house where love is not; you bear in mind that 
proverb, Peggy.’ ” 

The story told so fearlessly by Mrs. Brown gave Mrs. 
Linden courage to give her experience. 

“Well, I’ve not told this to folks before,” she said, 
apologetically, “for I wanted to do what I thought right 
and not to go against the minister, and it was no sin to 
begin with ; but I was very glad that it came about. It was 
just a week ago when I was far too sick to hold my head 
up, and little Dolly says to me : ‘Ma, let me bring that kind 
lady and she’ll know how to make you well.’ But I sent 
her off to school with a good scolding, for I wanted no 
one in the house when I was feeling bad like that; I was 
only too glad to get the children off my hands. Well, if 
that little scamp, without telling me, did not run off to hei 
house and says : ‘Ma’s awful bad, so you’d better hurry up 
and make her better.’ 

I never was in such a fluster as I was when she came, 
for I hadn’t cindered up, and all the breakfast things were 
on the table; and, sure enough, the hair brush on the chair. 
But she just made me feel all right about it in a minute. 
‘Now I haven’t come to see the house,’ she says; ‘it’s you 
I’ve come to see,’ and then she sat down in her velvets, and 
took my hands in hers — such soft and pretty hands she 
had, as white as a corpse — I was fair shamed to let her 
touch my hard, rough, brown ones, but she did not notice 
them at all; she looked right at me and then, somehow, I 
did not care what went on ’round us. It didn’t matter if 
the children did come home and And that dinner wasn’t 
ready, or if my week’s wash wasn’t blowing in the wind on 
a Monday. I went right off to sleep and left all that 
behind me, and when I awoke — well, you may laugh your 
hardest when I tell you — I was better. She had gone 
then. There were some sweet flowers on the table and the 
washing-up all done, and I tell you I fair blushed to think 
that those pretty white hands had touched our dirty cups.” 

“I wonder where she was going in her motor this morn- 
ing?” said Grandma. “It could not be possible that they 
had sent for her to little Pearl?” 

“I bet not,” replied Jack; “they’d be too afraid of the 


24 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


Doctor. They say this last month he’s let no one but 
himself and her parents go into her bedroom. He’s a good 
man, is Doctor Bailey, but you’ve got to keep the right 
side, and I guess he’s just nettlish over this case.” 

Grandma nodded her head. She had known the Doctor 
since he came, a little black-eyed, black-haired boy, to the 
village. She had watched him climb, step by step, to the 
top of the tree. She had read the papers with joy when 
the city, ten miles away, reeked with his name. Then 
had come his fortune, and he had built a lovely mansion 
at the outskirts of his native village and given his services 
free of charge to the inhabitants. All loved Dr. Bailey, 
and Grandma knew only too well that not one of the 
inhabitants, however much they might wish it, would go 
opposite to what he directed. 

But in spite of all this, Mrs. Thorpe’s motor was bound 
for the cottage. She found all in confusion when she 
arrived. The operation was about to take place. The 
table in the downstairs room was prepared; the instru- 
ments lay open to the light. 

Calm at last after her long night of weeping, the fleet- 
footed little mother, with anxious face, followed the 
Doctor’s firm and quiet directions. The doors were closed 
on all now, and he went upstairs for his little patient. A 
neighbor woman was with her, keeping her up till the last, 
with pictures of the New Jerusalem and a Heaven beyond 
the stars. The child was not listening. Her ears were 
strained to every sound in the room below. She had heard 
them say that the operation was to be at ten. It only 
wanted five more minutes now. At the sound of the foot- 
step on the stairs she hid her face in the pillow and a shu- 
der shook her little frame from head to foot. 

The visits of her Doctor had always been the happiest 
part of her lonely little life. The dark bedroom had been 
left bright many rainy days for hours after he had gone, 
with memories of the stories he had left behind. He came 
like a breeze from an outside world; a world apart from 
the little one in which she lived; a world where he moved 
from day to day, but a world she had never seen; and the 
stories about which were like a wonderful picture book to 
her. 

He had pondered long before this operation. He knew 
the frailty of the child. Her little life, just flickering like 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


25 


the flame of an unsteady candle. Yet without the operation 
none of his drugs could save her. 

He saw her face turned from him for the first time in 
his life. The little face as pretty as a flower, which always 
smiled a welcome into his, however bad her pain. He bent 
over the crib and stroked her golden hair. 

“Pearl,” he said gently, “speak to your old friend.” 

A stifled sob was the only answer. The child had clasped 
her little hands. “Oh, God,” she murmured, brokenly; 
“don’t — don’t let me have this operation; I do not want to 
die.” 

The mother heard the words and her sobs answered the 
child’s. 

He wrapped the blanket ’round her and lifted her in his 
arms. 

“Do you think I would hurt you. Pearl? Do you think 
I would let you die? Are you afraid to trust me, little 
girl?” he asked. 

“No, no,” she answered, shuddering; “only I’m fright- 
ened — frightened of going to sleep and then awakening to 
find—” 

She stopped. There was a knock at the door downstairs. 
Someone had come in. Above all things, there must be a 
quiet house. It was already past the time for the opera- 
tion, and time with him meant business. 

“Why should there be an operation at all?” the voice was 
asking. It was a woman’s voice, clear and convincing; a 
voice which spoke with the authority which breaks con- 
viction. 

The doctor laid the child upon the bed and went down- 
stairs. He was thoroughly the doctor now; the soul of 
operation was in his eyes, and he was not to be trifled 
with. Mrs. Thorpe came towards him. He had not met 
her before, but even at a moment like this he could not 
help being struck by the beauty of her personality and the 
magnetism of her great dark eyes. 

For a moment he met those eyes unflinchingly. He knew 
himself to be possessed of hypnotism to no small degree, 
and exercised it over every character he came in touch 
with. He had expected her eyes to fall before his straight 
gaze, but she returned it steadily, and for the first time he 
felt that in a woman he had met with something that he 
could not fight. 


26 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


“Where is the child?” she asked. “She is going to live 
without the operation. The growth came itself and it must 
remove itself. You are giving all the power to the instru- 
ment, to your own clever surgery which makes you hack to 
pieces what God created and called good. We are going 
to break that power. The operation must not, shall not 
take place. The child will be well without it.” 

“Impossible,” he answered, curtly; “you trifle with what 
you know nothing about. You are only to be excused on 
the plea of woeful ignorance.” 

“And do you think it is impossible?” she asked. “Why 
are you struggling so against the truth? Why are you 
flghting a power you possess to so great a degree? Why 
are you pushing success right beyond your reach?” 

“Success?” he asked. “I am satiated with it. The city 
clangs on every side with my name. If you dispute my 
power in the profession, you dispute the power of one who 
has practiced over twenty years, whose reputation is 
spotless.” 

“And what are your cures made up of?” she asked. 
“Wherein lies this power that you speak of? Does it lie 
in the drug mixed with water and sweetened to the taste? 
Does it lie in the silver-coated pill? Does it lie in the 
instrument, or does it lie in the Heaven-sent healing 
power within you?” 

She asked these questions in a way he could not resent, 
in a way he could not help but answer. 

“Oh, I suppose a man’s personality goes into every- 
thing,” he casually replied. 

“Then, if you believe that,” she answered, “you must 
help me now with your positive vibration. You must place 
your mind with mine, and instead of putting your trust in 
the operating knife, you must break its power and give 
that power to God.” 

He turned on her with an expression of scorn, and yet 
her eyes held him with a fascination he could not fight, 
could not account for. They came to him like messengers 
of a truth he wanted to push away. 

“And now we are going to take the child out into the 
open air,” she continued, “into the center of life, with the 
life vibrations around us. We will get right away from 
the sick bed, away from the operating table, away from 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


27 


the house which has too long been curtained with evil and 
apprehensive dreams. We will go among the things which 
God has made, and leave the things He did not make 
behind us.” 

She went upstairs into the little bedroom, where Pearl 
was lying with expectant eyes. 

“Pearl, darling,” she said, gently, as she raised her in 
her arms, “we are going out to see the birds and flowers.” 

The child looked at her wonderingly. A new hope sprang 
within her heart. 

“But the operation?” she began. 

“You are not going to have it,” said Mrs. Thorpe, de- 
cidedly. “You do not need it; you are better now.” 

“You must spread the quilt out on the grass,” she said 
to the woman seated by the bed, “right where the sun can 
shine upon her.” 

She led the way downstairs into the open air and laid the 
little one close to the lilac trees, where the bees buzzed 
busily and the birds gave their emotions to the world. 

Life throbbed in the warm earth beneath her — throbbed 
in the warm air above. The sunshine kissed her stretched- 
out limbs and the shadows of the trees fell like soft, cooling 
hands upon her head. 

Angry, amazed beyond measure, and yet held by a 
magnetism he could not account for, the doctor watched the 
scene. No one noticed him now. They had gathered in 
wonder around the child. For the first time in his life he 
felt the lack of his importance. He saw his instruments 
swept aside like a child’s toys. He saw his power, his 
presence, considered nothing. He who had been called the 
king of operations, he who had walked the hospitals, he 
to whom everyone had turned with a confidence which 
could not be shaken. And yet bitter, angry, resentful as 
he felt, there was something in this power which kept him 
rooted to the spot. 

The child’s eyes were closed now. She was breathing 
with difficulty. 

“It was the little children that the Healer called to Him 
to bless,” said Mrs. Thorpe, “and you are one of those little 
children. Pearl, and He is holding out His hands and 
looking straight at you.” 

“I can see Him,” cried the child suddenly opening her 
eyes. 


28 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


“And I see Him, too,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “There is 
healing in His wings, healing in His hands, healing in His 
touch, and that healing is for you.” 

“She is dying,” cried the mother, as she saw the fixed 
expression in the eyes. 

“No,” replied Mrs. Thorpe, decidedly; “it is life for her, 
life,” and as she spoke, the same quiver of the Divine shook 
her from head to foot like it had done in the pinewood 
years before. 

Thrilling with the power, she laid her hands upon the 
child. The little limbs quivered and stretched out. With 
a cry she threw up her arms, gasped, breathed deeply, and 
turned upon her side. 

“She is dead,” said the neighbor, decidedly; but Mrs. 
Thorpe did not answer. 

She was holding tight to the silken cord which bound 
the fighting little soul to earth. The vibration of a strong 
mind was turned against her, but with a sudden snap like 
the breaking of a band of iron, she felt the destruction of 
its power. 

The child’s eyes opened and turned to her. In them 
there was the light of a new life. She kissed the faintly 
smiling lips and held the little hands, and through the 
joyous song of nature her voice went up : “Father, I thank 
Thee that Thou hast heard me.” 

**♦:(:** 

It was evening. The air was very still. The sun had 
set amidst rolling clouds of red and gold. The crescent 
moon had come up. 

Out on the grass where the dew was falling the doctor 
sat alone. It was just a week since he had packed up his 
unused instruments at the cottage. He had never been 
there since. The news had come to him from every 
direction that little Pearl was well; that she was able to 
walk about the garden, and Mrs. Thorpe was there every 
day. 

Tonight, as he sat in the silent wood, his thoughts 
reverted again and again to that scene, and not only to 
that, but to another scene when he had lost a patient 
beneath the knife. A fine, strong young man, just entering 
the profession, who had placed his life in his hands as 
fearlessly as a child would have placed her hand in her 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


29 


parent’s. He had wanted the operation, it was true; but 
he had died under it, and the sorrow of his death hung like 
a cloud over the doctor. 

“How could I?” he had asked himself. “How could I 
have prevented this bright young life, which was going to 
be such a light to the world, from dying into darkness?” 

He remembered how the boyish eyes had turned to him 
before they became clouded by the anesthetic, and how he 
had said: “If this should fail, don’t be discouraged. It is 
a risk, but someone has to give their lives if we would get 
the higher light on surgery.” 

What was it, he asked himself, that he had lacked to 
keep the flame aflicker in that strong, young body? What 
was it that had enabled this woman to hold that little frail 
shell of a child to earth? 

New avenues of wisdom seemed opening out before him. 
What was this subtle power this woman held? How far 
could it go if rightly directed? Would it be possible for it 
to triumph over operations? raise the dead? to save life? 
to keep what was needed in the world? 

His life had always been a disappointment to him. His 
fame had brought him no joy. It was like a curtain of 
tinsel hiding the smiling sky to a lover of nature. He 
wanted to tear down that perishable curtain and get to the 
beyond. He was holding out unsatisfied hands, straining 
his eyes to see through a mist the sunrise. 

Unconsciously his whole life had been a prayer for light 
and truth, and now the light and truth were coming to him, 
but like many another, he had closed his eyes upon them. 

He walked towards his house and passed from the 
veranda into the library. Wealth had bought him all he 
needed. He glanced at the books from which he had gained 
so much, but he saw nothing but one face — the face of a 
woman peering like an angel’s out of a mist — the woman 
who had forbidden the operation. He picked up the evening 
paper and tried to read. He saw his own name heading 
the leader. He flung it down in disgust. He had seen his 
name enough in print to sicken him. 

“God,” he cried, “what is fame to me? Short-lived as 
the life of that newspaper — read today, and tomorrow 
crumpled in the grate to light the fire.” 


30 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER IV 

The storm had been threatening all day. Coppery and 
indigo clouds piled on the horizon. Low rumbles of distant 
thunder gave warnings of what was to come. No one 
could grumble at the sudden collapse of the sunshine. 
They had had four days of it — four days of unclouded 
blue skies — and this was England. 

Liza Hammond had an inborn horror of a storm, but 
since she had come in touch with Mrs. Thorpe she had 
been trying to believe that she feared nothing. Still, the 
dark and cloudy sky depressed her. The heavy air fell 
like an unliftable weight upon her spirits, and every rumble 
of thunder made her start as if she had been shot. She 
closed her doors, drew down her blinds, and sat with her 
apron over her head. 

“Lord ha’ mercy upon us,” she murmured more than once. 

The wind began to blow and raise the dust. She took 
down her Bible from the shelf and put on her glasses, when 
a vivid flash of lightning made her quickly remove them. 

“I’ve heard all my life that steel was a sure attraction 
for lightning,” she said, “but deary, deary! it’s a strange 
world if every thought we think is going to have the same 
attraction to hurt some innocent folks as badly as the 
lightning. Aye, it’s a strange world, and it’s just as well 
we don’t live long enough to And out all its strangeness.” 

She shook her head grimly at herself in the mirror as 
she spoke. The sight of her inflamed eye reminded her of 
something she had forgotten. She touched it delicately 
with her Anger tips. 

“It ain’t gone yet,” she said, nodding and winking 
sagaciously at her own reflection. “It don’t get well as 
fast as Peggy’s blindness do.” 

She opened her little salve box and began to apply the 
remedy she had laid aside the day before, when a footstep 
on the path and a knock at the door made her start guility 
and return the box lidless to the cupboard. 

The Rev. Barnaby Sugden stood upon the doorstep. He 
was wiping his forehead voraciously. He was so out of 
breath with hurrying to the nearest shelter that for a 
moment he could not And his voice to speak. 

“Come in and welcome, sir,” said Liza, who would have 
embraced almost any human being at that moment. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


31 


'T thought you’d feel the danger of the storm, Liza,” he 
said as he stepped in. “In every flash one seems to feel the 
nearness of the Eternal. There are many of my flock 
will wish for me today, but I chose to come to you, Liza, 
for, knowing your fearing and doubting heart, I felt it 
would be a comfort to you to have a man of God beside 
you.” 

“Yes, but I’ve many a time felt the need of a man of 
God more than I do today,” said Liza, while her mouth 
twitched at the corners. “I’ve seen the time when I’ve 
been that frightened at the lightning I would hide my 
head beneath the pillows, but now — well, that good, sweet 
lady that made little Pearl better, she’s come and talked to 
me.” 

“Ah!” interrupted the minister; “so you have fallen a 
victim to her power. I had thought better of you, Liza.” 

“Well, sir, her teaching’s just the same as yours, but she 
somehow puts it in a different way, if you’ll excuse me, sir,” 
said Liza, “and I don’t know but it’s done me a whole lot 
more good than all the doctor’s physic.” 

“See that you have nothing to do with her,” said the 
minister. “She is one of the false prophets we are warned 
against in the Holy Word; her power is from the evil one.” 

A vivid flash of lightning, followed by a long, deep roll 
of thunder, made him emphasize his words by jumping 
nearly from his chair. It was followed by a quick footstep 
up the walk and a knock at the door. Liza rushed to open 
it, and welcomed Mrs. Thorpe, wet and smiling, from the 
storm. 

“This is the lady we were speaking of,” she said. “Talk 
of angels and you feel their presence.” 

“There’s more in that than is often supposed,” answered 
Mrs. Thorpe, brightly, as she bowed to the minister and 
unfastened her cloak. 

“You surely don’t call us poor earthly mortals angels?” 
he asked. 

“Certainly,” she answered. “Why should we have to 
wait to be angels until we get away from earth. Now are 
ye the sons of God, and what are His sons but His angels? 
We do not have to wait until we have passed beyond to be 
in His presence — we are in it now; and so long as we keep 
there we shall not feel our frailties, our humanity, but shall 
do His bidding as the angels do.” 


32 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


“Then I doubt I’m very far from being an angel,” Liza 
sighed. “It’s easy enough to have no fears when there’s 
nothing to be afraid of, but when there comes a storm like 
this, it makes one shake in one’s shoes in spite of making 
up one’s mind beforehand.” 

“When you have learned the lesson that perfect love 
casteth out fear, then you will dread nothing, Liza,” said 
Mrs. Thorpe, gently. “The storms may rage and beat, but 
they can have no effect when you know that Infinite love is 
all about you, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” 

“Liza spread out her brown fingers on her knees and 
smiled at them. She was wondering what the minister 
would say to this doctrine. 

“Then have you no fear of an angry God?” he asked, 
gravely. “No fear — ” 

“And what has He got to be angry for?” asked Mrs. 
Thorpe, in a tone so sudden that Liza’s lips twitched. 

“Have you no fear of the judgment?” he continued, 
without replying to her question. 

“What judgment?” she asked quickly; “I know if I lose 
my temper with you I shall be sick tonight; that judgment 
comes back certain as a ball fiung into space.” 

“I refer to the future judgment,” he answered; “the 
judgment beyond.” 

“And I refer to the present,” she said; “I believe our 
punishment for sin comes just as quickly back to us as it 
comes to a child who, putting out her hand to steal a 
cherry, receives the smack from her parent as she carries 
it to her lips. 

God is not hoarding up a big book of offenses to tell 
against us at a judgment day. How tired He would feel if 
He were! The God whose thoughts and smiles have 
made this world has not sat down in His Heaven of light 
to spend the rest of His time in counting the sins of the 
people He has placed in that world. The God of the ages, 
the God of creation, of the white and black, of the savage 
and the pigmy, has some great and wonderful plan for 
every creature He has formed. The God whose voice is in 
the storm, in the ocean, in the rustle of the leaves and the 
lapping of the waves upon the shore — ^the God whose great 
love comprehends the earth and Heavens — the God whose 
light we see in the opening of a purple ‘morning glory,’ 
and whose tenderness we feel in the fresh young leaves 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


33 


uncurling in the sun — this God is not the God of wrath, not 
of destruction — is not the God of Dante’s Hades nor 
Milton’s bottomless pit.” 

“Then you believe in nothing after earth?” he asked; 
“no future punishment for those who sin, no great reward 
for those who love their Saviour?” 

“I know not what that something is which God is holding 
for us,” she replied, “but I do know that He who formed 
all things good has willed that good should live forever; 
that He will look to the good rather than the bad, and it 
is the good in us which will exist. 

Your doctrine teaches you to preach God to the world 
as a loving and a tender Father; then is there a Father on 
the face of the earth who, if he has a wayward and an 
erring child, will say: ‘I have corrected you long enough; 
go your own way now, but I have a horrible punishment 
laid up for you one of these days. Your brothers and 
sisters who have loved and obeyed me shall come in for a 
rich reward, but you — well, I mean to torture you forever 
and forever.’ And does he hoard up that punishment for 
months and years, and then unforgivingly cast his child 
into it? 

Work out your own salvation, Christ has said, and we 
may have to come right back to earth to do it. To come 
back born with a dislike for the sins we have committed in 
a former life, and yet born with the propensity to commit 
them again. Through lives, through centuries, through 
ages, we may have to return until we are fitted for some- 
tWng too wonderful for our infant minds to bear the 
strain of now.” 

“Then you mean to tell me that you have no fear of 
death, no horror of the grave?” 

“I look to Him who conquered death, who broke the seals 
of the grave which enclosed Him, who came back again in 
the body; the one who went about teaching how to live; 
the one who healed the sick and fitted them for life; the 
one who brought back Lazarus from the tomb, knowing 
his work was in this world ; the one whose command was to 
the apostles, ‘Feed my lambs, go forth to the harvest, 
preach the gospel, heal the sick.’ He never said spend all 
your time imploring to be saved; He never pointed the 
sick to a Heaven beyond the tomb. He realized the need 
was for them here.” 


34 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


“Then what is your creed — your religion?” asked the 
minister. 

“I love my God,” said Mrs. Thorpe, softly. “I walk in 
His light. Did Christ teach creeds to His apostles? Did 
He take them into brightly lighted cathedrals and make 
them walk with stealthy tread, saying: ‘Here have we the 
house of God?’ Did he command a certain time for 
worship, for man to rise up in the pulpit or fall upon his 
knees and pray, whether the voice of the Spirit spoke 
through him or not? The world in which He moved, the 
world beyond, the Heaven above, was all God’s house to 
Him, and He preached His gospel where He saw the need. 
He flung no food to those who were not hungry.” 

“And you profess the divine gift of the Saviour to heal 
the sick?” 

“Was not the gift given to the apostles human and frail, 
possessing all our weaknesses? When the Saviour said, 
‘The works that I do, ye shall do also, and greater,’ did He 
mean it for those men alone? If He did, then every word 
He uttered was for them and not for us, and we might as 
well close our Testament and turn our backs upon His 
gospel. Why should we clip out that one verse and lazily 
declare He did not mean us in that case? We are just 
shirking His greatest command, the hardest to fulfill, the 
most trying to our faith.” 

“You have taken up a work which will meet with much 
criticism in this country,” said the minister. “I should 
advise you to abandon it, for we are deeply versed in Bible 
study and can trip you where you think you stand.” 

“Criticism cannot touch me,” she replied, “and if our 
feet are on the rock we cannot fall. I know the truth; I 
feel its freedom, and my truth shall go forth to the world. 
I am here to deliver my message ; not to be uplifted or cast 
down by the frail opinions of mankind. I build from His 
direct inspiration, and not on what His creatures do or 
say.” 

The minister arose. The storm had passed while they 
were talking. 

“May the Lord have mercy upon you,” he said, as he 
shook hands. 

“He will,” replied Mrs. Thorpe, smiling brightly. 

Liza opened the door for him to pass out, and shook her 
fist behind him many times. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


35 


“Well, mam, I could not help it,” she said, apologetically, 
as she poked the fire to a blaze. “It was as good as a play 
to see you put him down like that.” 

“But you must not call it putting him down. It was 
merely giving him the truth as God has given it to me; 
the truth I am endeavoring to teach to all of you; the 
truth which, when we once believe, we shall live in and 
breathe in, and have no need of ointment for our eyes.” 

Liza started guiltily. She had forgotten both the oint- 
ment and the pain in the enjoyment of the conversation. 

“Well, mam, Pm sure I never meant to go against you,” 
she began ; “but it was the thunderstorm that did it. When 
you had talked so beautifully to me about the good Lord 
taking all our ills away, both big and little, I said: Tf He 
can cure Peggy’s blindness. He’ll cure this little inflamma- 
tion in my eye,’ so I just sat down and thought to myself: 
‘Now, Liza, there’s nothing that ails you; you’re real well 
and you haven’t got a pain.’ Then the thunder storm 
came on, and I grew frightened and a bit in want of some- 
thing to do, so I thought I’d look in the glass and see if I 
could see with open eyes what I had seen with closed ones; 
but sure enough the inflammation was still there, so I 
helped the faith with a bit of ointment.” 

Mrs. Thorpe laughed outright. “So long as you place 
your faith in the ointment, then use it, Liza,” she replied; 
“but when you depend alone upon the Great Physician, then 
you will have no use for doctor’s fluid.” 

“It’ll be a bad time for the doctors then, I’m thinking,” 
Liza sighed. 

“No, it will be the best time of their lives,” she answered, 
“for they will heal without the use of the drug, and when 
they have once swayed the minds of the people in the right 
direction, when every heart is in tune and every vibration 
goes the same way — ^when faith and suggestion are no 
longer poured out of a glass bottle — then the doctors will 
own to the power which they often unconsciously practice, 
and which many of them believe in now. Did medicine 
ever cure anyone? an eminent doctor once said to me. No, 
it is all faith and suggestion, mental healing, and, if you 
like, Christian Science, only we can’t afford to own it yet.” 

“And is it that which will cure Peggy’s blindness?” 
asked Liza in an awestruck whisper. “They none of ’em 
believe it in the village, and Mrs. Waring said she’d give 


36 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


the feathers off her bit best hat to see the miracle take 
place.” 

“Peggy is getting her eyesight every day,” said Mrs. 
Thorpe, “but it comes slowly because she has been so used 
to dwelling in the thought that she was blind, and all her 
life the same thought has surrounded her, and so it makes 
her darkness difficult to penetrate. But the light is dawn- 
ing on her gradually, and the more she gets into touch 
with the One who healeth all our diseases, the cloud will 
suddenly break and she will see the sunshine.” 

Liza sighed. She was a renowned gossip, and there were 
so many outside stories concerning Peggy that she longed 
to repeat to this lady, so many conversations she had 
overheard at the village well, and ’round the cottage fire- 
sides, but she knew they would fall on unappreciative ears. 

Mrs. Thorpe rose and threw open the door. The sky 
was smiling and blue again. The passion of the storm 
had spent itself as quickly as the tears of a child. Nature 
was drying her eyes in the sunshine. Life clothed in 
rainbow robes was wearing her brightest smile. A soft 
wind shook the raindrops from the trees. She caught 
them in her hands and laughed like a happy child. 

“The world is so full of such wonderful things, 

I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.” 

“Those were the words of a great sufferer, Liza,” she 
said. “A man who might have lived in the darkness of 
the valley, but who was always in the sunshine of the 
heights. He left us with a legacy of beautiful thoughts 
to come to us like Christmas roses in the snow; like the 
songs of robins in the storm. With a body racked and 
torn with suffering he never let us feel his pain. His body 
might be in the depths, but his soul was smiling at us 
from the heights. There are too many beautiful things 
in the world, Liza, to look at what man has made ugly. 
If our eyes are on the stars we shall not see the gutters.” 


THE WOMAN HEAEER 


37 


CHAPTER V 

Herbert Curruthers laid down his brushes wearily. The 
shadows of night were falling. Daylight was closing her 
beautiful eyes on the world. He had torn up his last 
canvas and his heart was ill at ease. He was conscious 
that someone had entered the room and was standing be- 
hind him. The footstep was light as thistledown on the 
carpet, but he knew it too well to turn ’round. 

“What success?” asked the visitor, leaning across his 
shoulder and looking from the empty easel around the room. 

He dronned his eyes almost in shame. “I am no nearer, 
Penelope,” he answered. 

She flung aside the silken curtains from the window. 
Above all things she hated the mystery of twilight. She 
would rather have the room as dark as pitch. , 

He walked towards her and took her hands within his 
own, looking fully into her cold but handsome eyes. 

“You are thinner,” she remarked sarcastically. “You 
must have been working unusually hard.” 

“I have not slept for weeks,” he answered. “I have 
been up before daybreak each morning.” 

“Your work speaks for you,” she replied. 

His sensitive color rose. Why would she so mercilessly 
stab the ideal he saw but could not give expression to? 

“I know I have not got much outward show,” he said at 
last. “It looks to you as if I had done nothing, but if you 
had seen the canvases I have destroyed this week — ” 

“Why, why,” she asked, “why do you waste your time 
so foolishly? Last year when you and Leval had your 
studio together, your pictures were selling on all sides. 
I cannot understand why you ever left that man; he 
seemed to give you life and inspiration. All your best 
work was done when you were by his side. If you had 
continued with him you might have been as rich as he is 
now. Of course, I don’t admire his choice of subject, but 
money covers a multitude of sins.” 

“The last canvas I hung in the academy, I destroyed,” 
replied Herbert quietly. “I have spent all I had made in 
rebuying those canvases which in my younger days 1 
had sold with pride. When my eyes had opened to the 
truth, I turned my back upon past work. I left Leval, 
much as I loved him, because I knew our paths lay wide 
apart; I felt from henceforth I must walk alone. 


38 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


I looked around a suffering world and asked what help 
mv pictures brought to it. What had my art done to up- 
lift humanity? I saw a stretch of wasted years behind 
me. but I saw the possibility in front. Now I am seeking 
truth with open eyes and empty pockets, and if she brings 
me but the realization of my dream I am content.” 

“Content to die in poverty?” she asked. “Oh, Herbert; 
you have not lived as I have or you would not talk like 
that. I have seen enough of poverty to turn my brain. 
Cramped and crushed down for want of money — keeping 
a good appearance to the world and suffering in silence. 
Never able to attend a ball or party because I had no 
frock to wear. Our well rubbed gloves, our mended and 
remended clothes. No; I have drunk too deeply at that 
stream. I will have wealth and comfort, ease and luxury, 
whatever the getting of it may cost me.” 

“There are greater miseries than poverty,” he said. 

“Then I prefer to taste them,” she replied. “I mean to 
marry wealth even if sorrow holds her hand.” 

She saw the look of pain upon his face and came toward 
him. A tender, sweet look softened her eyes. 

“Listen to me, Herbert, she said gently. “You are 
dearer to me than all the world, only you have no money. 
I believe in your genius, although I sneered at you a mo- 
ment since. I believe in your power as an artist, but no 
true artist is rich, and I will tell you why. They spend 
all their time in pursuing an impossible vision; an ideal 
they can never attain, and so they pass out of life dissat- 
isfied, unrecognized, penniless, and often without a friend.” 

The young man’s face grew pensive. 

“I should not like to think of not attaining what I search 
for,” he said sadly. “I have given un so much; I have 
groped for it so lonp- so wearily in the dark, but now I 
believe I have the light upon the canvas, only I want the 
inspiration to give it to the world. 

It came to me so wonderfully, Penelope. I had gone 
to the cottage where blind Peggy used to live. I had an 
idea for a picture, and I wanted her to sit for me. But 
Peggy was not there, and they directed me to Mat Tre- 
gowan’s house. You know the place as well as I do, with 
its dirty cobwebbed windows, its garden over-run with 
weeds. But when I reached the gate I stood transfixed 
before it. It seemed to me no fairy stepping from the 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


39 


pages of Grimm’s Goblins to wave her hand with ‘Presto 
Change,’ could have more quickly worked this transform- 
ation. 

I sat down just inside the gate. The atmosphere of 
peace and rest was everywhere. The sun was filtering 
through the leaves and penciling the shadows on the 
grass. A robin fiuttered to my feet for crumbs. Then 
suddenly a lady came towards me, and, oh Penelope, if I 
had not seen yours, I should have said hers was the most 
beautiful, the most wonderful face I had seen in my life. 
She was dressed in white, and — ” 

“Oh, I know who you mean,” Penelope interrupted. “It’s 
the American woman who is turning the heads of the 
village people to the disgust of the minister. I heard that 
he even spoke of her by name in his sermon last Sunday, 
taking his text about the false doctrines, and he gave his 
audience some very hard hits on their folly.” 

“She was dressed in white,” continued the artist, as if 
he only saw his picture before him, “and she held by the 
hand that pretty, fair little child who has lain so long 
and so patiently on her back in the upstairs room of Bob 
Harrison’s cottage. The child was actually walking about 
and laughing as gaily as any of her comrades. 

I asked for Peggy, but when she came, I decided at once 
that hers was not now the face to fit into the hollow of my 
canvas. I had noticed the change in her eyes before she 
spoke, and then she told me how her sight was coming 
gradually, and she declared that she could see my face.” 

“Yes, that story is ’round the village by now,” replied 
Penelope, “but the minister declares that although she 
professes she can see, yet when he holds out his hand to 
shake hands, she does not take it.” 

“We sat down in the garden,” he continued, as if he 
were thinking more of his subject than of what she was 
saying. “Evening was falling now. The sun was setting 
in a background of crimson and gold. The sky was a blaze 
of light. Red clouds were sprinkled over the horizon. 
The bright glow fell like fire through the trees; and as 
we sat together with the birds singing their goodnight 
songs, and the babble of the little brook in the distance, 
she spoke to me of the One to whom her whole life had 
been dedicated, the One I had pushed out of my life when 


40 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


I joined Leval in those five wasted years left like a blot 
behind me. 

As a little child, Penelope, I believed in a living Christ. 
I had loved to dream of Him as I sat by my mother’s side 
in front of the great stained glass window in the church, 
where, in the morning, the sunlight fell on His glittering 
garments, and in the evening the light from the niter 
candles, like veiled mysterious moonlight, shone upon His 
face. 

As a child, that Christ was beautiful to me. I loved 
the God who breathed into the air, opened the petals of 
the violets and swayed the birds to sleep in the trees. But 
when I grew older there came a new philosophy, preached 
by a man in black robes from a high box in the Church. 
There I lost my vision of the Christ upon the window, of 
the God of the golden maples and the ripening corn. I 
got a vision of a God of wrath, of a fire that never ended, 
of a hopeless, bottomless pit. Then I closed my Bible, I 
shut the door of the Church with a firm hand; I turned 
my back upon religion. 

But while I talked with her, a new light broke upon 
my soul, and as I listened to her voice falling so calmly 
and yet so positively upon the air, it seemed as if the God 
of my childhood had come back to me — the loving, tender 
God, compassionate with our weaknesses, lenient with our 
follies, the God which I had found in the woods, in the 
trees, and in the opening of a flower. 

And while she spoke of the Great Healer, such a vision 
came to me as I have never seen before. Oh! if I could 
but paint Him as I saw Him at that moment! I have 
looked upon His face so many times in the galleries where 
genius of the past and present held its sway, but I have 
turned away dissatisfied. He was always too much the 
man of sorrows; the crucified Christ, the suffering human- 
ity dying in agony upon Golgotha’s cross. Not the Christ 
who would uplift the world, but the one appealing to man- 
kind for help. 

But while she talked another vision came to me. It 
seemed as if the heavens had parted and in one flash of 
light I saw Him in His strength and power. King of the 
everlasting kingdom, the One who conquered sin and 
death. The One who trod the streets as the Divine — 
cleansing the leper, raising the dead, the One who said. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


41 


‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ ” 

He stopped for the door had opened and Leval was in 
the room. 

Penelope bowed stiffly, and turned to go. Herbert 
followed her out on the balcony and for a moment they 
held each others hands. There was a softened look in 
her eyes at that moment which made her handsome face 
look lovely. 

“If anything should happen, Herbert,” she said gently, 
“if you should hear that I have — you know what I mean 
— then understand it was not love which made me do it; 
it was because he had the money — and I am weary, oh, 
so weary of oeing poor. The tiny legacy which I had left 
was only just enough to help me to buy a pleasing outfit, 
and it has all gone now, and I must have more. I was 
never meant for a poor man’s wife, and you would find 
that out if you married me.” 

And then she laid her hands upon his shoulders and her 
soft lips touched his cheek. 

Herbert returned to his studio and drew aside the cur- 
tain from the window. The moon was up now and the 
white light bathed his untouched canvas in a shroud of 
spotless purity, reflecting as in a morror the vision .of the 
Christ. 


42 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER VI 

It was not at all a pleasing day for Peggy when Mrs. 
Thorpe arrived home with a new addition to the family. 
The addition came in the shape of a clumsy, overgrown 
child recommended neither by her looks nor manners. 
Many times had the sad story of that Ophelia Pollard 
been told to Mrs. Thorpe. Her parents were good, hard 
working peovle, steady, honest, truthful, attending church 
each Sabbath, reading their Bible every day, and why so 
terrible a visitation had come to them in a child so dif- 
ferent from themselves surpassed even the comprehension 
of the minister. 

Every kind of punishment that could be found had been 
visited upon her, but Ophelia bounced out of all just like 
an India rubber ball to repeat the offense. 

“Ever since that child left the cradle and was able to 
walk, she’s been nothing but a care and a sorrow,” broken- 
ly sobbed forth the mother when Mrs. Thorpe, for the first 
time, went to the cottage. “I’m trembling all day long 
and wondering what will happen next. She never goes 
out of my sight but what I’m dreading to hear of some 
harm she’s done to someone. And I’m sure we’ve encour- 
aged her enough. We’ve bought her pretty frocks when 
we’ve not had money to give at the collection. They’re 
telling in the village that you’ve a remedy for everything, 
but what will you say in this case, if you please?” 

Mrs. Thorpe smiled. “I should say, she replied, “that 
the child was at the mercy of your thoughts, and that she 
had too much thought around her altogether. How could 
she flourish in such an atmosphere? If you are always 
pulling at a flower and taking it up by the roots, even if 
it is done in kindness, you cannot expect that flower to 
grow. 

As soon as this little one began to run about, you 
found that she was more mischievous than most children. 
Well, what you should have done was not to impress her 
with the fact that she was mischievous by constantly 
scolding her for it, but to have given her plenty of em- 
ployment to keep her out of mischief’s reach. To have 
turned her thoughts from selfishness by making her share 
whatever she was given with another, and to have taken 
her toys away when she refused to lend them. Instead 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


43 


of that, you began bewailing her faults before her, and 
while punishing her for them you feared her. 

No one has been fair to that poor child, for while 
wishing to do your best, you have pushed the best away. 
Now, I want you to give her a new start — to let me have 
her for awhile.” 

“But, mam,” cried the mother, “she will — ” 

“No, she will not,” replied Mrs. Thorpe. “Again you 
are following her with the fear thought. Give her to 
me and rest assured that this is the turning point of her 
life, and she is now going to do better than she has ever 
done. Don’t threaten, nor don’t bribe her, but think the 
best for her, and then how can she help but do the best?” 

So Ophelia was bought a new frock and sent to Mrs. 
Thorpe’s, but her arrival was hailed with anything but 
joy by Peggy, who at once came down from the exalted 
pinnacle on which she always stood in Mrs. Thorpe’s pres- 
ence, and showed her humanity by her infinite disgust and 
denial of all of which she had been such an earnest disciple. 

“We shall never do any good with Ophelia,” she de- 
clared. “She’s known all over as a bad lot.” 

“Well, now she is going to be known all over by a dif- 
ferent reputation,” Mrs. Thorpe declared. “You must 
not add to the stumbling blocks cast in her way. We can- 
not expect the flowers to grow when we are pushing them 
down with a spade. This child has all her life been kept 
out of the sunshine. Now we are going to put her in its 
warmth and let it flow in on her every day and she is 
bound to blossom like a rose.” 

Ophelia, besides being into everything her fingers could 
reach, was hopelessly lazy. She would rather have sat 
on the floor all day than have washed the dishes, and 
when put to sweep the bedroom she would sit on the edge 
of the bed adorning her arms and neck with the pretty 
jewelry she found in Mrs. Thorpe’s open case. 

“I’d keep that case locked, mam, I would indeed,” sighed 
Pegffy, when behind Mrs. Thorpe’s back Ophelia was 
boasting of the chain she was wearing. 

“No,” replied Mrs. Thorpe decidedly. “We are going 
to lock nothing away from the child. Ophelia must learn 
that she has to look on many things in life without touch- 
ing them. It is easy to be good when we are untried, but 


44 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


our natures must learn to resist and develop in the midst 
of temptation.” 

“Ophelia,” she called to the child, “run upstairs now 
and bring me that little blue book I left on the dressing 
table. I saw you looking at it a few minutes since.” 

Ophelia was gone like a shot, but in vain Mrs. Thorpe 
waited for her return. 

“Ophelia,” she called from the bottom of the stairs, 
“come, have not you found it?” 

Ophelia’s little elf-like face peered white and scared 
over the top of the banister. 

“Oh, mam,” she sobbed, “it’s gone, it’s gone; it isn’t 
there at all.” 

“Then you’ve put it somewhere,” called back Peggy. 
“It’s just like the same trick she’s always playing on me, 
mam; she deserves a right good punishing, she does.” 

“Come down, Ophelia,” called Mrs. Thorpe gently. 

The girl descended with a great flop of slippers and 
stood with downcast eyes in front of her mistress. Mrs. 
Thorpe took her hand kindly in her own. 

“Now, tell me the truth, Ophelia,” she said. 

“Oh, mam, I am sorry; I am really,” she said burying 
her face in her apron, and beginning to cry afresh. 

“Well, if you are sorry, that’s the first step to not do- 
ing it again,” Mrs. Thorpe assured her, “so tell me what 
you did with the book.” 

Ophelia sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes. 

“Oh, mam, you’ll be that angry,” she said, “but I was 
looking out of the window and I saw the parson going 
past, and I tried pulling a face at him, but he had not got 
his glasses and he could not see, so I just took that book 
and threw it at his head.” 

Peggy laughed outright, but Mrs. Thorpe answered 
gravely, “And what good were you doing either yourself 
or him? Your unkind thought has only brought you trou- 
ble in return. But come with me, and we will try to And 
it, and after this you’ll know you only bring sorrow on 
yourself when you attempt to hurt another.” 

Ophelia went with her into the garden, and together 
they searched for half an hour, but the book was nowhere 
to be found. 

Ophelia returned to her work with promises and tears, 
and Mrs. Thorpe went to her room. There on the table 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


45 


where she last had seen it, the book she sought was lying. 
“Ophelia,” she called, “the book is here.” 

Ophelia dried her eyes and giggled. 

“Yes, mam,” she said. “I Imew it was. I only pulled a 
face at the old parson — I never threw the book at all!” 


46 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER VII 

When Penelope Herchel had become Penelope Osborne 
she called for the first time on Mrs. Thorpe. Her carriage 
with its dashing chargers and powdered flunkeys stopped 
at the door when that lady was just at the most exciting 
part of her story to her weekly class of children. It was 
too damp to sit out of doors, so they had decorated the 
room with flowers and formed what they called a pulpit 
or a throne out of a table and chairs for their queen. 

Mrs. Thorpe greeted her guest heartily and let her 
into the bright room, where all the happy faced children 
were seated. 

“You will have to come and join us here,” she said, as 
she pulled out a chair. “I was just telling the children — 
what was I telling you, now?” 

“You had just got to where the mannakin had dug up 
the box of kind thoughts,” piped one little voice. 

“Yes; and he thought when he looked at them that thgy 
were all jewels,” chimed in another. 

“Well, the story is nearly finished,” continued Mrs. 
Thorpe. “When he saw that brilliant light shining and 
dazzling like fiery opals, illuminating the wood from end 
to end, he wanted to keep these treasures all for himself, 
but out of the blaze a picture arose of the king who had 
lost his box on the hunting field long, long ago — and one 
of the kind thoughts flew out of the box and pierced his 
silken waistcoat, and entered his heart. And this little 
thought whispered just like a spirit voice in his ear: 

“Take us all to the king, and let us live with him, for 
we cannot get there unless you will take us.” 

“But the mannakin did not want to do this. It was a 
long, long walk to where the king lived, and the wind was 
quite bitter and the snowdrifts were deep. So he tried 
to pluck out this little kind thought, but there was noth- 
ing to get hold of, and it was working itself further and 
further into his heart and kept talking gently to him all 
the time of the king whom nobody loved because he had 
lost his box of kind thoughts. 

The mannakin lay down to rest, but the thought would 
not let him. The lid of the box had flown open. The 
cave from end to end was a blaze of ruby light and in that 
light the little thoughts, like white and gold winged fairies, 
were flying to and fro. At last he jumped up hurriedly, 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


M 


pulled on his fur boots and cap, lifted the box in his arms 
and opened the door of the cave. Outside the storm was 
ra^ng and the wind nearly blew him oif his' feet. The 
night was very cold, but the little kind thought in his 
heart helped him along over the mountains until he 
stopped at the castle and peeped in through the window. 
The moonlight was shining in a silver sheet on two little 
white beds in which two lovely children lay. They were 
wide awake although it was past midnight, and not 
Christmas Eve. The tears were wet on their cheeks. 

“ ‘Karl,” whispered his little sister sadly, “would not it 
be nice if only father were kind to us again like he was 
before mother died?” 

“The mannakin, opening the box of kind thoughts, had 
taken one out, and it flew from his hand right into the 
little girl’s mouth and stopped the hopeless answer that 
was just coming out. 

“ ‘It comes to me,” she replied, ‘that we’re not kind 
enough to father. We never kiss him now like we used 
to do, and how can we expect him to love us if we don’t 
love him?’ 

“Karl looked reflective. One of the kind thoughts had 
flown from the open box right into his heart. 

“ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘perhaps he wants us to love him just 
as much as we want him to love us. Let us go to him and 
see.’ 

“So they got up and trotted with their little bare feet 
into his bedroom. But the mannakin was there before 
them. He had taken one of the kind thoughts and pressed 
it down into the king’s heart. The pressure awoke him 
and he opened his eyes and saw his children by the bed. 
The light of a father’s love was in his eyes as he held out 
his arms towards them. 

“ ‘My darlings,’ he said gently, ‘why have I neglected 
you so long?’ 

“ ‘And why have we forgotten you, father?’ they asked. 

“And then he took them in his arms and they found all 
the love that they had missed.” 

“But what of the mannakin?” asked the impatient 
children. 

“The mannakin stole from the room. He was more than 
content. One great thought had clung tight to his heart 
and was almost strangling him with delight. It was the 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


48 


thought of the joy he had left behind him, which was going 
to take root with the others deep down in the garden of 
his heart, where more and more were each day growing 
until a little flower garden of kind thoughts bloomed ever- 
lastingly there.” _ 

“And is that the end?” gasped the little voices as she 
stopped. 

“There is no end to the box of kind thoughts,’ replied 
Mrs. Thorpe. “It is a wonderful fairy box and the more 
you take out the more there comes in, and you can never 
take too many. And now we are just going to sit Per- 
fectly still and close our eyes and see what sweet little kind 
thought will drop into our hearts as we sit in the silence. 

Penelope could hardly believe her own senses. Here she 
was with a crowd of village children listening to a fairy 
story, and actually entering into a sort of kindergarten 
game. And yet she was obliged to confess that she en- 
joyed it. 

The children went oif with their bright smiling faces, 
and then Mrs. Thorpe turned to her guest. 

“Was not that a lovely little gathering?” she asked 
without any apology for having kept her waiting. 

“Now, Ophelia,” she added, turning to the child whose 
wide open eyes were fixed on Penelope’s handsome cloak 
and jewels, “you must go and complete the pie which you 
ought to have made us for lunch. I want Mrs. Osborne to 
stay and take tea with me, so let us have your very best.” 

Ophelia pulled a face behind her hand and ran grace- 
lessly off. If the pie had been apple or plum she would 
not have minded her task, but there was no fun in peel- 
ing hard sticks of rhubarb which she could not eat as she 
went along. 

“So, that’s the little urchin you’ve befriended?” asked 
Penelope as she watched her out of sight. “I should hard- 
ly think it was safe to have her in the house.” 

“Ophelia is improving every day,” said Mrs. Thorpe, 
“and I like her to take responsibility because it is a thing 
she has never been given before. I think it is good for 
her to fail so that she may learn how to succeed; but we 
must not follow her with that everlasting thought of fail- 
ure which has dogged her footsteps too long. Come into 
my library and let me show you the books.” 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


49 


Penelope followed, and turned over the few volumes, 
the tracts and leaflets lying on the table. So she called 
this tiny collection a library. It was certainly not the 
American idea of bigness. 

“I am going to get others after awhile,” continued Mrs. 
Thorpe, as if she had guessed what she was thinking, 
“but we must make the best of what we have and more will 
come to us. The thoughts in these books helped me in 
the other land, so I brought them over the water with me, 
knowing they would give the same help and power to 
others, too. These sweet little fairy stories, so full of 
pretty fancies, please the children like they charmed me 
when a child.” 

Penelope looked at her half sadly for a moment. She 
thought of the big library which she could now call her 
own. The hundreds of unread unopened volumes there — 
the books which brought no pleasure to her, no soothing 
influence to her heart. 

“And all this gives you happiness?” she asked. “It 
seems so strange to me how anyone can be really happy 
in this world. I used to think that if I had the wealth 
to buy all I wanted, I should find what I most craved for. 

I have got that wealth now, only it is not what I need.” 

She stopped. She wondered at herself for having gone 
so far. Who was this woman that she should let her 
know her secret? 

“The kingdom of heaven lies within you,” said Mrs. 
Thorpe, gently; “not in the things which rust and break 
and fade and pass away. I find my Heaven in the radiance 
of a summer morning, or when out of the soft, melting 
darkness, the flowers stretch their tired limbs, and still 
half dreaming, smile at the soft caresses of the sun. I 
find it when life opens her great apron in the Springtide 
and flings her treasures with both hands into our midst. 

I find it when the tender leaves of the creeper blush deep- 
est red beneath the kiss of Autumn — and I find it in the 
silvery icicles upon the barren trees — in the lights upon 
the drifted snow, in the rapturous songs of a bird to its 
Creator, in the gladsome laugh of a little child.” 

Penelope turned over the leaves of the volume in her 
hand. “I do not believe in your gospel,” she said, “but I 
came because I was interested in you. My life has been 
a wretched failure; a mistake from the beginning, and 


50 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


this last step has been the worst of all. In your country 
you a.r6 fro© womon. You ar© not bound by tn© ©ntornal 
chains which rest with iron strength upon our wrists. 
You make a false step in your marriage, but you can rem- 
edy that step, you can gain your freedom for the asking. 
But after all, we will not talk of that. I want you to do 
something for me. You know the artist, Herbert Cur- 
ruthers?” 

“I met him once, not long ago,” she answered. “I was 
interested in what he told me of his work.” 

Penelope was silent for a moment. She seemed to be 
battling with an emotion which threatened to overpower 
her. “He is dying,” she said at last. 

“There is no death,” replied Mrs. Thorpe, “unless we 
will it.” 

Penelope’s soft hands toyed with the flowers in the vase. 

“I want you to go to him,” she said at last. “He has 
no woman near to help him. Leval is staying with him 
now, but Leval is all wrapped up in self. He cares for 
nothing beyond that. I want you to go to Herbert.” 

She spoke his name unconsciously but with a softened 
accent in her voice. 

“I cannot go. Convention holds us married women with 
a cruel grip. They say that he is dying of consumption — 
his chest is always weak and it has threatened him for 
years.” 

She paused a moment, bit her lip hard and then con- 
tinued : 

“You profess to cure diseases; to do so much for every- 
one around you. There is nothing I can do for him, noth- 
ing I can do, so you must do it instead.” 

“You can help him by your thoughts and by your pray- 
ers,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “See him no longer in the shadow, 
but where the artist ought to live, upon the summit of 
unclouded heights.” 

Penelope rose to her feet and turned towards the door. 
“I can’t believe in prayer,” she said, “but if I did, I would 
not have a prayer now for myself. I would sink my every 
wish in one for him.” 

“You are not going yet,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “Ophelia 
would be disappointed if you did not taste her pie.” 

She took out the cloth as she spoke, and began to spread 
it on the table. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


51 


“Pepfgy is out this afternoon,” she continued, “so Ophelia 
will show you how well she can manage by herself.” 

“Come, Ophelia,” she called briskly, “bring the cups,” 

“Oh, mam, I can’t,” replied a palintive voice from the 
kitchen. “I’m minding the pie.” 

“Then let the pie mind itself for awhile and come and 
help me.” 

Ophelia ran willingly backwards and forwards while 
Penelope watched her with a certain kind of amusement. 
There was something so vitalizing in this preparation for 
tea that for the first time for months she began to feel 
hungry. 

“And now, bring in the pie,” said Mrs. Thorpe, when at 
last the meal was laid and they were seated at the table. 

“Ophelia, with many giggles, placed it before them, 
and then ran to hide behind the door and await the result. 

“It might have been better, and it might have been 
worse,” declared Mrs. Thorpe, when Penelone fought with 
her face against convulsions as she swallowed a mouthful 
of the tart rhubarb. “Next time there will be less anxiety 
around it and more love in it, won’t there, Ophelia?” 

• Ophelia came from her hiding place and stared blankly 
at her. 

“Sugar does not make a pie sweet, nor do the best ingre- 
dients make a cake good unless we drop a little fiavoring of 
love in, you understand. If we are dropping in worry 
thoughts, and thoughts of dislike we cannot expect any 
of our work to be good. You know last night I asked you to 
bring me my slippers, and you ran to get them with a 
frown. Well, somehow, those slippers did not fit cozily. 
It was as if there were a nail inside, and then I remem- 
bered you had dropped a frown in, and that frown had 
prevented me from enjoying the full comfort of my slip- 
pers. Now, tonight I want you to bring me them with a 
smile, and they’ll just fit as cozily as possible.” 

Ophelia’s face changed suddenly. Her oyster like lips 
parted in what looked like a grin to Penelope, but which 
was to Mrs. Thorpe a smile as beautiful as the light 
of Heaven on her face. 


52 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER VIII 

Herbert Curruthers lay upon the cushions of his divan. 
His brushes were idle. He could no longer paint. The 
specialist had just been in, and now he knew the worst, 
but it had come to him more bitterly than he though^t. 
Courage to live had once been his prayer, but now he 
wanted courage to die. Courage to leave behind his un- 
realized ideal, his empty canvas and unfinished work. 
Courage to pass out of the world having left nothing to 
make it better for his existence. He gazed upon the past 
until his heart grew weary. There was no future now to 
brighten that dark scene with possibility and hope. He 
closed his eyes on the mocking sunlight and turned his 
face from the window in at which the tendrils of the ivy 
twined. But for his incompleted work, death would have 
been sweet to him in all his pain. 

Leval crossed over to the divan and laid his big cool 
hand upon his head. “Better, Herbert?” he asked gently. 

Herbert took that hand and held it fast. 

“Too bad to keep you here, Leval,” he murmured, “only 
somehow I don’t want you to go. When there’s no life 
around me I grow frightened as a child. You’ve been a 
good friend to me, Leval; the parting of our paths in art 
was not the parting of our friendship.” 

“Never,” Leval said firmly, “but I’ve been unworthy of 
your friendship, Herbert. I never knew just how to ap- 
preciate all your ideals. It’s often want of knowledge 
makes us cruel in this life. But if there’s anything that I 
can do to help you — ” 

“There is nothing you could give me now,” he answered. 
“There is but one thing I wish for, and that is life — life 
just to do this work; then I would be content to die.” 

“And I believe you’ll do it,” said Leval. “In spite of 
what the doctors say, I think you will.” And then he 
turned away and left him. He could not bear the sight 
of that thin altered face in all its pain. 

Down in the village Dolly Linden leaned across the gate 
awaiting him. Dolly with her big hyacinth eyes and 
flaxen curls had always been his favorite of the children. 
She rushed to meet him, held his hand between her own, 
dancing in front of him and smiling into his face. 

“Is that man that wears the pretty ties no better?” 
she asked, pointing to the house. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


53 


“Not much,” he answered quietly. “I’m hoping he’ll be 
well tomorrow.” 

“Why don’t you get the lady that’s an ’ealer to him, 
she’d make him well.” 

“He mightn’t care for ladies, Dolly.” he put her off 
by saying. 

Dolly looked almost vindictively into his face. 

“I don’t like men that mightn’t care for ladies,” she 
replied. “When you get sick I’ll bring her to you and 
she’ll make you well.” 

“Tell me how she will do it, Dolly.” 

“She’ll come and sit down by your bed and hold your 
hands and stroke your face, and look into your eyes just 
like an angel.” 

Leval smiled slightly as he answered: “That sounds 
all right; you’ll have to bring her, Dolly.” 

A motor suddenly whizzed past them in a cloud of dust. 
The child’s grasp tightened on his hand. “She’s there,” 
she said in a church interior whisper. “I shouldn’t won- 
der if she’s not going to him without the asking.” 

Leval watched the motor stop in front of the door, and 
as he saw Mrs. Thorpe descend, a thrill of hope sprang 
up within his heart. What, if after all, they should be 
right, and this woman could bring to him a new awaken- 
ing power which the doctors failed to find. 

Herbert was half sleeping when Mrs. Thorpe entered 
the room, but he heard a gentle step upon the carpet and 
felt a pair of soft, cool hands upon his burning tired eyes. 
A sense of peace and calm fell over him as sweetly as an 
evening benediction. Presently the hands were lifted and 
and he looked into her face. It was the same face he had 
seen in the garden that never-to-be-forgotten night when 
the great vision of his life work had come before him. 

She flung open the window and the silver sunlight 
streamed across the floor and upon the empty canvas on 
his easel. He looked towards it and sighed. 

“Look away from there,” she said commandingly. “We 
have nothing to do with that now. All that will come 
later. Christ healed the body first, for He knew that with 
a diseased body work was imposible. Look at the sweet 
scene of life, the blue Heavens and the trees through which 
the sunlight smiles. This is life — life as God made it — 
life where you see His smile and hear His voice whichever 


54 


FHE WOMAN HEALER 


way you turn. Drink it in as you drink the crystal water 
from the streams; reach out your hands and fill them 
with it, like you would fill them with the roadside flowers. 
You do not pause by the pink clovered meadow and wonder 
if the scent were meant for you. You do not stop your 
ears to the silvery notes of the nightingale. You take 
these things as gifts from God. Take life as naturally 
as you take the sunshine; take it and thank God for mak- 
ing it a song of gladness, and life will never let you slip." 

“But the doctors are all agreed upon my case," he said; 
“they say that it has gone too far for cure. I may live 
months, I may live years, but after this serious illness I 
have had, I shall never be well enough to work again. 
Consumption has settled on my lungs, and I feel I would 
rather die than live to look upon my untouched canvas; 
to always see before me, the what I might have done." 

“And you think the God who filled this world with air, 
fresh, pure and beautiful to give His people life, will 
close your lungs against it? Will stop your power to 
breathe? Draw in this life with thankfulness, and realize 
that though the cloud has gathered around you, it will 
break. The thick mist may envelop the mountains but the 
sunlight shines and the mist is gone and the mountain re- 
mains an untouched tower of strength from which the 
warm wind kisses the wet drops. Listen to the wonderful 
song all nature sings. The one great buzz of life which 
turns the wheels. Then why should we drop calmly out 
of it because they say the end had come? There is no end 
to life to those who grasp it — for those who tenaciously 
grip it with both hands." 

A bird began to sing aloft in the branches of the oak 
tree. The cattle lowed on the distant hills. The warm 
sun fell through the window like the kisses of an angel on 
his face, and as he lifted his eyes to those above a thrill 
of hope like an electric shock ran through him. The heavy 
gates which with his own hands he had been forcing open, 
went to again. The song of life went on with imperative 
earnestness, and his weak and fluttering heart beat back to 
normal rate, 

“If I could live, but live for twelve months more," he 
said, “to paint my ideal." 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


55 


“And here is life beside you,” she replied — “life throb- 
bing warm and beautiful. Hold her fast, cling to her now 
and you are saved.” 

A glad smile lighted up his eyes. 

“And you think I will be able to handle my brushes 
again?” he asked. “You think I will be able to give the 
world a living vision of the Christ?” 

“You have been wishing to make a picture of the Great 
Healer live upon the canvas, wishing to give the world a 
vision of the Christ when you were doubting His power 
to heal you. No wonder your object failed. No wonder 
you threw down your brushes and tore up your canvas. 
How could you give to a suffering world the vision of Him 
who came to heal, when every vibration of your body was 
a pain; while the sick thoughts with the visions of death 
were ever beside you. Could your picture inspire others 
with His power when you had no demonstration of it? 
First heal yourself, then give your picture. When you 
have looked into the eyes of Him who healed; when you 
have even touched the hem of His garment, then, infused 
to the finger tips by His divine fire, you will set forth 
His light upon the canvas. It may not be all at once. 
You will have to prove it. You may have to wait many 
years until it comes, but sure as your whole life turns 
upon the vision, it will be for you and for the world.” 

“I believe it will,” he said suddenly. 

“Then hold to that belief now,” she answered. “Close 
your eyes and see only the picture of yourself in the 
strength and perfection of manhood. Sleep with that 
thought resting on your heart and you will begin to be 
well from this hour.” 

She rose and left him, and like a little child he lay with 
folded hands and a new and joyous hope within his heart. 

The moon came up like a setting sun. The moths rose 
and fell amidst the flowers. In the leaves of the syca- 
more tree the soft wind whispered and then the door opened 
gently and Leval came into the room. Herbert’s eyes 
were open but there was a new light in them new. He 
stretched out his arms to his unused canvas as if before 
him he saw the fulfillment of his dream. He felt the 
new strength, the new hope, the new life, filtering through 
his veins. He surrendered himself afresh to his work. 
He knew that now all things were possible. 


56 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER IX 

When Mrs. Thorpe’s motor stopped at the front of Bryan 
Osborne’s gate, Penelope’s heart gave the first throb of 
joy that it had given for many weeks. At last, at last 
she could hear something more about Herbert. 

Mrs. Thorpe came in with cheeks fresh with the glow of 
the morning air, and that brightness in her eyes which 
always set those who did not know, wondering what hid- 
den secret of happiness she held in her heart. 

Penelope came forward eagerly and took the outstretched 
hands. “Tell me, how is he now?” she said. 

“He is better. Getting well each day. He has too much 
work before him to die. He could not escape if he wished 
it. He is going to do greater things now than he ever did 
before. But I have come now to talk about you; to tell 
you how glad I am. I only heard this morning that you 
were expecting to be a mother.” 

Penelope started, then colored angrily. “That can be 
no matter of gladness, nor of congratulation to me,” she 
replied. 

Mrs. Thorpe stood back and still holding her hands, 
looked steadily into her eyes. “No matter of gladness,” 
she said. “What do you mean? The wonder to me is 
that when a woman knows that God has so highly favored 
her with the gift of creation that she does not fall upon 
her knees and thank Him.” 

Penelope turned aside. “There is not much to thank 
God for,” she answered bitterly. “Do I thank God this day 
for allowing my mother to bring me into the world; to 
cast my life into the pit of poverty and then to leave me 
to scramble out as best I could? Do I thank my parents 
for endowing me with their mixed natures; a heart like 
stone, but a heart that can bleed to death in silence? Does 
Herbert thank his mother for sending him into the world 
born with ideals he has no power to carry out; stamped 
with hereditary disease? No, we have nothing to thank 
our parents for and if I could deny my little one its ex- 
istence I would do it, and perhaps in another world it 
would live to thank me. I would rather, far rather, it 
never saw the light of day than live to suifer what I have 
suffered.’ 

“Then why are you paving its path to suffering?” she 
asked. Poor little helpless one, entirely at your mercy. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


57 


How many sad hours, how many dark days are you storing 
up for it by your thoughts?” 

“Why should I wish for it to live?” she asked. “What 
can there be in life for it? What is there in life for any 
of us when all is said and done? Thank God it will never 
have to be poor, to measure poverty like I have had to do 
in the past; but what can it ever be to me? It is the child 
of a man I do not love, a man to whom I sold myself for 
wealth. Oh, yes, I know it is my own fault. With my 
own hands I tied the chain. He knows the reason why I 
gave myself to him. He took me for my beauty, because 
I was bom to fill some high position in the world. He 
knew my heart was with another, but that was nothing 
to him. He was not jealous. He did not marry me for 
love. Oh, I loathe my child because it will be his child 
too. I have wished a thousand times that I might never 
look upon its face.” 

For a moment Mrs. Thorpe’s strength of will failed 
her; her firm lips trembled and the tears swam to her eyes. 

“Don’t! Don’t!” she cied, stretching out her hands. 
“I feel as if I saw the child’s eyes looking into mine in an 
appeal for pity. I seem to hear that little voice crying 
from the darkness with a bitter cry for mercy. Poor 
little child, entirely at the will of its creator, unable to 
help itself in its creation. You are going to cast its life 
upon the world and you want that life to be different 
from your own, and yet you are daily feeding, nurturing 
it with ugly thought; stamping all your emotions on that 
delicate, sensitive unformed mind — distorting it, crippling 
it, damning it. How many sad, unhappy hours you are 
storing up for that child as you sit brooding here in the 
silence ; how that little heart will ache many a time, 
though it cannot tell the reason why. What beauty can 
your child see in the little children, or hear in the joyous 
crow of a babe, when the one who is to give it birth, 
would, if she could, still forever, the cry with which it 
welcomes life. How can it love the sunshine when you are 
living in the shadow? How can it love its life and wish 
to keep it when the one from whom its existence came, 
was wishing herself dead? 

Poor little child. Its creation spoiled in the gentle 
bud. Not wanted! Surely that little soul cast on the 
world would cry in anguish to it’s God for deliverance 


58 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


Some day the mother’s love will awaken within you. Some 
day you will long to take to your heart that little one who 
calls you mother, but will it be any wonder if to your love 
and your devotion there is no response? You must take 
it to your heart right now. You must feel the little soft 
warm form in your arms and kiss its face with a mother s 
kiss. You must give it all your love now, or you will 
never get that love back in return. Ah, I think if they 
told you that your little one was dead you would cry out 
for the soul some other world had claimed because you 
were not worthy to possess it.” 

Penelope listened and the hard lines about her mouth 
relaxed. Her pretty chin trembled and her head dropped 
on her hands, and for a while Mrs. Thorpe let her sob in 
sil6TlC6 

“My* poor little child,” she said at last. “Oh, I wanted 
to spare you the cruel life that I have had — the cruel mis- 
takes that I have made. I did not want to hate you, but 
you will be his child — his — and you might have been — ” 

“It is God’s child,” answered Mrs. Thorpe softly. “Shall 
we give it to Him now; shall we realize this little life may 
be just what you desire? That each thought you think 
is going to be like a stone laid in a building, like the 
fresh touch of color on a picture incomplete? 

How much there is we teach our children after birth. 
How little we teach them at the most important time of 
all. What you want your child to love, you must love, 
too. Let us get up and take it into the sunshine where 
nature sways it with the breath of God. Let us listen 
to the babbling brook and pick the flowers just like it 
will pick them. Let us be happy as children and thank 
God again and again for life, for light, for the blue 
heavens, for little children.” 

Penelope would not have believed it, but she arose and 
followed. She had not been out for days. The breeze was 
fresh and cold. The purple and gold crocuses had pushed 
their heads through the brown soil. The air smelt fresh 
and damp with rain, and in this scene both women saw 
the vision of a little laughing child amidst the flowers, 
racing with eager feet in the wind. A child born of God. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


59 


CHAPTER X 

Mrs. Thorpe was gathering roses in the gorden one bright 
summer morning when the Rev. Barnaby Sugden passed 
the gate. They had not met since their interview in Dolly's 
cottage, but he had been watching her work from day to 
day. 

“I suppose you know that fever has broken out in the 
village,” he asked as she greeted him with her usual 
smile. There was something about her poise and coolness 
that was irritating — yet soothing to his nerves. 

“So they told me,” she answered, “and that is why I 
am gathering these flowers — to let those who are in error 
see God’s smiles are everywhere and the God who made 
the roses never made sickness.” 

“Twelve houses are down with it already, anyway,” he 
answered. “I am closing the church, for most people 
are contemplating a holiday and I think everyone who can 
afford to go, will be better out of the way of the infection.” 

“If they feel they can do no good, and they are afraid 
of infection, they had better go,” she replied, “but if 
they are going to do good — and know that nothing shall 
by any means hurt them, then let them stay — but the 
less bad thoughts we have around us the better.” 

“And you,” he asked, “are you going to remain?” 

“Certainly,” she answered, “I have no excuse for a 
vacation, for I find my vacation wherever I am. I get it 
right here, helping those who need me. Vacation in the 
best sense of the word means rest and happiness, but if 
all rest and peace and joy comes from within — whether 
we are in the riot of the city or in the silence of the Sa- 
hara, we find our Heaven in service. Now is the time 
when we want the open church. You never had a greater 
message for the people than you have today. Throw open 
the doors, the house, the garden, the soul. Let the healing 
love of the Christ pour through the heart and hands. 
Take the little children in your arms and bless them like 
the Master did. Say to the storm-tossed, fearful heart 
of the mother that the God of love who gave her her little 
ones will not snatch them from her loving arms — with the 
healing of the Christ flowing from your garments walk 
into every fear-racked home and speak the words of com- 
fort and you will no longer be the far-off priest who glit- 
ters like the distant stars, but you will be the loving 


60 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


brother and by your brotherhood for man will be drawn 
closer to God Himself.” 

The minister listened intently. “It is a pity you are not 
converted,” he said quietly, “you would have done much 
good from the pulpit.” 

Mrs. Thorpe laughed merrily. “Here is my pulpit,” she 
said, waving her arms. “In the last analysis when we 
look over the pages of this immense book we are all writ- 
ing — the pulpit — the glory — the form — will not amount to 
much. Those who have the golden History will not always 
be found in churches. We are all God’s ministers to each 
other, and if we realize our duty now, and if each and 
all of us send out the thought that ‘Perfect love casteth 
out all fear, the fever will die out like a hot flame, on which 
cooling water has been poured. 

“Now, Peggy, I want your help,” said Mrs. Thorpe 
when Peggy came into the garden. “You must prove to 
these people that the truth has made you free. We can 
reach them perhaps better now than we have ever done. 
You are going with me to carry health to the sick. The 
call has come for you, and you must go in answer to it.” 

“But, mam,” cried Peggy, very pitifully. “How can 
I do this without you near me, for though I can see some- 
times, and see clearly, yet when I want to see the most my 
eyes are very dim.” 

“Say, rather, sometimes I have the faith which makes 
all things possible, but at other times my faith fails me 
and so like Peter I sink. Are you going to let this lack 
of faith form a barrier between you and good? So long 
as you are fearing criticism, your sight will never come. 
You must just cast out all that thought like an ugly weed 
and come with me. If you work for these people, never 
thinking of yourself — never caring what they are saying, 
then God will make all light before you.” 

j ^ the time, mam, I can 

do it, Peggy answered. 

“But you may not be able to be by my side, Peggy. 
We must never cling to any earthly thing, for earthly 
things are swept away, and then where do we find our- 
selves? If you are one with Infinite love, letting it lead 
and direct you, you will need no other prop.” 

“But who shall we leave with the house, mam, while 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


61 


we are away?” asked Peggy, whose thoughts were very 
material at this moment. 

“Ophelia must take care of that,” said Mrs. Thorpe. 
“We shall have to keep returning here for various things, 
and I want the child to feel the sense of her responsi- 
bility.” 

“Oh, mam,” cried Peggy, throwing up her hands. “Why, 
you don’t know her yet. She’ll have the house turned 
into the road; and she’ll break everything she lays her 
hands on into little bits.” 

“And even if she did,” said Mrs. Thorpe, “what are 
these earthly things that we need care? But that will 
never happen, Peggy. There is going to be a wonderful 
demonstration for us all, or siclmess would not have come 
into our midst. Ophelia,” she called. 

The little slipshod came running like a dog, in response. 

“Fasten your shoe laces,” said Mrs. Thorpe, “and then 
I have something to tell you.” 

Ophelia fastened them at double speed, and waited with 
her arms akimbo. 

All right, mam. I’ll look after things,” she said when 
Mrs. Thorpe had told her; “But will you be coming back 
at nights, because I’m scared to death of old Mat’s ghost.” 

“Peggy will always be with you after sunset, unless we 
need her elsewhere,” said Mrs. Thorpe; “but you told 
me once you were afraid of nothing. Now, Ophelia, you 
know that God is just as near to us in the darkness as in 
the light. Then, is it likely God will let a spirit He has 
blessed come back to earth with no other mission than to 
frighten those he left behind him?” 


62 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER XI 

The fever spread rapidly through the village. Within 
a week twelve houses were down, and from the parched 
lips of every sufferer came the one cry for the angel in 
white who came in so softly and so gently that they hardly 
heard her entrance, but felt the wonderfully sweet and 
soothing influence of her presence, and fell asleep beneath 
her touch. 

“What was this angel in white?” the doctor asked sarcas- 
tically when for the first time since he had attended her, 
the inn keeper’s little daughter pushed his medicine aside, 
saying she did not want it, she was no longer thirsty be- 
cause an angel in white had come to her bedside and given 
her the nicest drink of water she had ever tasted in her 
life. 

He was conscious of a power which was working against 
his own. He had known that this woman whom they 
called “the healer” had not left the village. He had seen 
her motor many times, but purposely avoided it. 

Jealous? He could have laughed at the idea. Jealous of 
a woman? A woman with no medical knowledge, only the 
power to turn the silly little heads of a silly little village, 
which he was doctoring, out of charity. How dare she, 
he added, dabble in this precious science? — and yet in 
spite of all, fight it as he would, down in his heart he 
knew she held the secret of an ungetatable something 
which he could not reach. 

The news came to him early one morning that Dick 
Hadley was more than usually sick. He set off for the 
cottage where Dick lived. Mrs. Hadley came to the door, 
but Her welcome was neither anxious nor cordial. 

“Yes, Dick has been mighty bad,” she said, “but he is 
better now and resting well.” 

The doctor had better not go in ; but the doctor had made 
up his mind to go. He was not going to be trifled with. 
To be sent for and then put off in this way. He ignored 
the woman entirely and went into the bedroom. The 
room felt very cool. The windows were open. There was 
the scent of flowers on the air. Dick’s bed was drawn into 
the sunshine. He was lying peacefully upon his back. 
A figure in white was bending over him. She was talking 
in the gentle soothing tones which had stilled his restless 
rambling. She did not seem to notice the doctor’s pres- 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


63 


ence, and he stood and watched, conscious himself of the 
sudden peace, a soothing influence amidst this scene of 
sickness. 

Then the doctor stepped forward and made his pres- 
ence known. “The case is mine now,” he said drily. 
“Will you oblige me by going out and leaving it to me?” 

“Certainly,” she answered gently, “we have been waiting 
for you to come.” 

She moved towards the door, but the man stretched out 
his arms. “Come back,” he called weakly, “you made 
me feel well.” 

“And I am going to make you feel well,” responded the 
doctor with a note of jealousy in his tone. “I’ve pulled 
you out of the ditch before today, Dick; will you trust 
me again?” 

He did not answer, but the doctor laid his fingers on 
his pulse. It was wonderfully calm, the fever had gone. 
He sat for a few minutes silent by the bed. The man was 
sleeping now, a sleep as sweet and even as a child’s. It 
irritated him to think he was not needed here; yet he had 
been sent for on purpose. He would let them know his 
time was not to be trifled with. 

Mrs. Thorpe was just preparing to leave. “He is bet- 
ter now,” she was saying, “and it rests with you to keep 
him so. No fear thoughts to shake his bed like a hurri- 
cane, and prevent him from sleeping. Remember God is 
love, God is health, God is light. The Bible never tells 
us God is sickness, does it?” 

The doctor came and stood in the doorway. He had 
made up his mind at last to speak. He raised his hat and 
coolly bowed to Mrs. Thorpe. She returned his bow with 
that straight clear look which no eyes could avoid. 

“If you have taken up this case,” he said, “I am not 
needed here, so it is useless for me to come. I have too 
great demands upon my time to throw it foolishly away. 
I suppose you know my services are given to the people 
of this village, and what we have not to pay for, we do 
not value.” 

“Why are you not needed?” 

She paused so long after the question that he was obliged 
to answer. 

“Because that young man seems to have found all he 
wants in you,” he said at last. 

“And how much more he would find if you worked with 


64 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


me " she replied. “If two minds understanding the power 
work together, how much greater the result. A strong 
hand may pull the rope with force, but if another strong 
hand comes to join in the pulling, is not the success more 
certain? 

There is a great work before us here in this village. 
If you only join me in it, the disease will spread no fur- 
ther You will lose no cases, for let me tell you som^ 
thing; you unknowingly possess that subtle power which 
keeps life in the body — that power which heals apart from 
drugs — that power, which if rightly directed, will raise the 

dead.” . , 

He met her eyes fully now. All pride and jealousy 
had gone before the great desire to know. 

“Life is a kite floating in the breeze,” she contin- 
ued. “It floats calmly, gently, lifted by soft gentle fin- 
gers, but when the wind spring to a hurricane then it 
is only the master hand upon the cord which can keep it 
from being torn from its moorings and carried beyond 
reach. It is given to us to hold life in this way. Before 
now you have been depending on your drug, on what books 
and experience had taught you. Now you are going to 
look beyond all this and your patients will get a part of 
yourself, a subtle something which they never got be- 
fore. You are going to be a great teacher, a great healer. 
You are going to cease to believe in death — to know God 
the life, the all ; and when with your positive mind you have 
realized that, you will hold life so that it cannot get out 
of the body. Give me your help. I need it now. Let us 
both in the same field pull at the same end of the rope 
and what a manifestation will be ours.” 

The idea amused him, but he could not resent it. He 
was possessed by a sudden desire to work with this woman, 
to follow her tracks, to watch her on every side, to go 
deeper into this power which she possessed. 

“What is your object in wishing me to work with you?” 
he asked. “Would not you rather have the glory all to 
yourself? If you possess, as you say, this wonderful 
power, why should you wish another to go halves in your 
fame?” 

“There is no dividing into halves,” she answered. “The 
works of God are not the works built on a desire for 
fame. I want your help because I know the strength of it 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


65 


— because I see in you the unused power which may yet 
become a tower of strength to humanity.” 

She left him then and went along the village. “I have 
done my part,” she said. “He sees the truth, and God 
will lead him to the fulfillment.” 

There was plenty of work before them in the days that 
followed. The strain of it was even* telling on the doctor, 
but he looked with puzzled eyes upon the woman who 
worked by his side. When did she take her sleep? Where 
did she find her rest? Was she, he wondered, spirit after 
all? He left her with the sufferers in the night time — 
he found her with them in the morning, youthful, beautiful, 
bright eyed as a freshly awakened child. Was she human 
that she never sat down to complain? From whence, he 
added, did she draw this inexhaustible supply? 

He would not have needed to have gone far to have found 
out. Each morning before day was breaking she stole 
away from the sick rooms beyond the houses, over the fields 
to where the little brook laughed and babbled to the ferns 
and blue bells, and where the silent hills stood up like 
towers of strength on every side. There lying on the dew 
damp grass amidst this scene of peace and rest, with the 
sun rising to kiss her to new life, and the soft wind strok- 
ing her gently on both cheeks — there with closed eyes she 
lay in the soothing silence, with only the voice of the 
Creator falling on her heart in the rustle of the leaves, 
in the quiver of the grass and the rapturous songs of 
the birds. 


66 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER XII 

Olaf Guthra had closed the door of his house that he 
might not hear the moans of his dying child. It was full 
moon and the bright light shone over his dark little 
dwelling in which the gentle voice of a woman had never 
sounded. Olaf had come to the Village five years be- 
fore with his two children. His past was unknown to 
everyone, and his dark face, his foreign accent and 
terious ways made him no favorite with the people. He 
had taken work where he could find it — breaking stones 
by the wayside; anything to get food enough to keep alive 
his dirty, neglected little ones. 

Olaf loved his children in the rough way of an animal, 
resenting all interference from others, shutting the door 
of his home on all except the minister. 

His boy had been the first to take the fever and to pass 
away before he had called a doctor to his aid. His little 
girl was now sick. The precious jewel in which his whole 
heart had been bound. He had clenched his fists and 
sworn bitterly when his other child had died, but he 
thanked God that he had his little Maychen left, the little 
one who looked at him with fearless eyes, climbed on his 
knee, and rode upon his shoulder. He had longed to fold 
her in his arms and fiy with her far from the reach of 
the scourge — to cover her little frail body with his coat 
and clasp her to his heart, even if they were to die to- 
gether thus. He was a coward over suffering, and her 
pitiful moans went to his heart. Suppose she too should 
be taken. His darling, his all. 

A woman passed him in the moonlight. He called her 
roughly to come back. It was Mrs. Linden, whose little 
ones had all had the diseaese. 

“Susan,” he asked roughly, “how are the kids?” 

“Well, now,” she answered, “but I’ve had them all laid 
up. Five of ’em bad at once, and I could do nothing with 
’em; not to save my life nor theirs. Dolly, she was the 
worst; she was fretful like enough to bite one’s head off, 
but when that lady came she did not worry nor get cross 
and scold ’em ; she just went up so gentle like, and laid her 
hands upon their heads and whispered soothing things — 
and they swallowed all she gave ’em just as if it had been 
sugar. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


67 


And Dicky says to me, ‘Ma, don’t you think she is an 
angel, ’cause I always dream of angels when she’s gone 
away?’ I did not know what to say to him, for I’d thought 
the same myself; but it seemed to me it might be giving 
offense to the Almighty if I brought one of His good folks 
down here. So I just says, ‘Maybe so, Dicky, but we’d 
best not talk about it.’ 

“Well, last week we had that awful thunder storm, and 
baby he’s fair crazed at anything like that, but she just 
took him on her knee and says, as smiling like, ‘Look at 
all the pretty lights the good Lord’s sending us, and all 
the beautiful rain to make the flowers grow.’ And she 
talks to them all so sweet, that I says to my husband, 
‘Even if it’s going against the minister and threatening 
damnation to our souls, we’ll have her.’ ” 

A sudden cry from indoors made Olaf start as if an 
unseen hand had stabbed him. 

“How is the little girl?” asked Mrs. Linden, 

“Better,” he answered, groaning inwardly. “I need no 
superstition by her bedside.” 

“She’d come to you as much as others. Mine’s not the 
only ones she goes to. There’s men, women, as well as 
children bless her coming.” 

“She shall never darken my doors,” said Olaf, bitterly. 

“I told her you said that,” responded Mrs, Linden, 

“And what did she say?” he eagerly inquired. 

“She said that you could do as much for your own little 
’un as she could. The strength was not in her, it was im 
God, and if God was in you, then you had no need for any 
other.” 

“Curse her!” he said, between his teeth. 

“Have you no doctor to the little ’un?” asked Mrs. 
Linden. 

“I’m my own doctor,” he responded. “As if I did not 
know as much about my little ’un as they do — both in 
league together with their superstition. I stick to what my 
minister has said, and if she dies — if she dies — if she 
dies — ” 

He clenched his hands. He wondered why his heart 
should be so bitter to this woman. 

Mrs. Linden turned and left him, and he went into the 
house. 


68 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


The little hot and stuffy bedroom was only lighted by 
the moon’s white rays. He walked towards the bed. There 
were no loving hands to raise the little one, to turn the 
hot and fevered pillows, to put cool bandages upon her 
head, or still the restless rambling. He saw death in the 
eyes that turned to him, and with a bitter groan he walked 
away. He could not brave himself to watch the passing. 

He sat out on the porch again. The moon came up 
bigger and brighter as the darkness deepened, and shone 
over the many houses on which fever had laid her burning 
hands. He thought of the little children fast growing well. 
The children who would live to brighten and gladden their 
parents’ hearts, and he buried his face in his hands and 
sobbed. 

The night wore slowly on. The groans in the cottage 
had ceased. Presently he opened the door and stole on 
tiptoe towards the bed. His little one had turned upon 
her side, her lips were parted in a smile. There was a 
look of that sweet rest upon her face which deep and 
peaceful sleep alone can bring. He bent over her and 
whispered her name, but she did not hear him. 

He was conscious suddenly that the room was cooler; 
that the window had been opened, and on the air there 
came the scent of flowers. The great darkness seemed 
lifted in a moment from his soul. 

“My little girl will live,” he said, and almost uncon- 
sciously he walked towards the flowers. Yes, they were 
real flowers — real roses — fragrant with new birth. Who — 
who had put them there? Had some pitying angel seen 
the lonely little child and laid the message of God’s love 
beside her? The little one opened her eyes as if in response 
to his question. She reached out her little hands towards 
the roses. “The lady,” she said, “the lady in white — she 
told me in my dream I would be well, and she told me she 
would leave the flowers.” 


THE WOMAN HEAEER 


69 


CHAPTER XIII 

Bryan Osborne had chosen a pretty little village for their 
summer retreat. He had always before spent the season 
in London, but for some reason unknown to him, Penelope, 
who loved gaiety even more than he loved it himself, had 
wished for the silence of the country. He was at a loss 
to understand his wife. Some chapge had come over her 
within the last few months. The resentment he knew she 
had felt at her approach to motherhood seemed gone. She 
was very still, very quiet. She sat at great deal alone, 
read more, thought more than she had ever done in her 
life. 

Sometimes he would follow her, fearing she was ill. 
Sometimes he even wished to see some of the old arrogance 
and temper which no longer seemed a part of her. This 
new Penelope was very strange to him. The Penelope 
who came in with her hands full of flowers and arranged 
them herself for the table. The Penelope who finished 
dressing so quickly, and spoke in gentle tones to her maids. 

There had been no love in his marriage with her. He 
had taken her for her beauty, because she was fitted to 
be the mother of his heir, and to be mistress of his estate. 
He could not have believed he knew the meaning of the 
word love, since he had had his dream dashed cruelly to 
pieces years before. 

But as he gazed from day to day into that pensive face, 
gaining in beauty as it gained in sweetness, he began to 
ask himself, what was this strange, new feeling in his 
heart for her? A sudden longing to take her in his arms, 
to kiss her lovely lips, as he had never kissed them, to 
grant her every heart’s desire because he longed to. 

This afternoon, as he sat by the open window looking 
out along the dusty road and over the wide stretches of 
fields by which they were surrounded, he was conscious of 
a sudden sense of loneliness — a longing for her presence. 
He took up a book and tried to read, but his eyes kept 
wandering from the page, and the author failed to hold 
him. He arose impatiently and prepared to go out. He 
wandered down the garden, out of the gate and into the 
lane, when he was startled by a woman’s shrill, sharp cry, 
a dashing of horses’ hoofs, and almost before he had time 
to move, his ‘bays’ rushed past him in a cloud of dust, with 


70 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


reins flying on each side of them and broken bride. But 
this was not all. In the distance he saw the overturned 
carriage and a white and silent figure lying on the grass. 
In a moment the composure he had believed to be unshak- 
able left him, and like a mad man he had rushed across the 
field. 

“Oh, Penelope!” he called; “Penelope!” 

She did not answer him. He was the first to reach her, 
and he lifted her tenderly into his arms and, pillowing her 
head gently on his knee, brushed back the lovely hair from 
her pale, unconscious face. 

“Penelope, my darling,” she cried, “speak to me; tell 
me, where are you hurt?” 

“Why don’t you go for the doctor?” he said, turning to 
the people who had gathered helplessly around him. “Fools, 
why do you stand gaping there?” 

He lifted her in his strong arms as he spoke, and carried 
her back to the house. The movement roused her, and she 
opened her eyes, to feel his passionate kisses on her face. 

“Thank God! she lives,” he murmured. “Tell me, Pene- 
lope, where are you hurt?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, feebly. “It is not myself; 
it is the child.” 

“The child?” he asked, vaguely. “What child?” 

“Our child. Our unborn little one. Oh, Bryan! what 
shall I do if I have denied it life? I did try to prevent it. 
I did try to hold the horses back, but they were too power- 
ful; they mastered me, and I was thrown out, and — and — 
oh, it is not myself that I have hurt.” 

“What does the child matter?” he asked. “What does 
anything matter, Penelope, if you are saved?” 

She returned his kiss, but buried her face in her hands. 

“Poor little one,” she murmured. “I have taken so much 
from it already. I never wanted it before, and now, when 
I was trying to live so that its life might be calm and 
peaceful, and its temperament happy and joyous, I have 
lost it. Oh, mv poor little dead baby, after all, I have 
denied you what I wanted so much to give.” 

“Penelope, the child is nothing,” he assured her. “I 
wanted an heir, you know it; but I would rather lose him 
a thousand times than you — you who have these last few 
weeks become dearer to me than all the world.” 

She was silent for a moment. Then a gleam of hope 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


71 


brightened her eyes, and she eagerly caught his hand in 
her own. 

“Bryan,” she cried, “there is one way that I can save 
the child. You must send for Mrs. Thorpe.” 

“For Mrs. Thorpe?” he said. “What could she do to help 
you? Be still, my darling; the doctor will be here presently. 
He will assure you that all is right, and you need have no 
fears about the child.” 

She turned her head almost impatiently away. “The 
doctor can do nothing for me,” she replied. “I am not sick. 
I do not need his help. What can Mrs. Thorpe do for me? 
What has she not done already? Whatever good is in my 
child I owe to her. Oh, Bryan! if you care for me at all — 
if you care for the child I am going to give you — ^you will 
let her come.” 

“But, Penelope,” he argued, “how could she come here, 
right out of the midst of the fever patients she is nursing, 
carrying the infection with her? It would not be fair to 
the people around us. Think, too, if you got the disease, 
it might mean death to you and to the child.” 

“She would not, could not, bring the fever — and, Bryan, 
let her come, for my sake, for the child’s.” 

She had never pleaded with him before. She looked so 
beautiful now — her face white with suffering, her great 
dark eyes eloquent with feeling, her hands clinging to his, 
like the hands of a little child, so unlike the Penelope of a 
few months before, that he could not refuse her, whatever 
the consequences might be. He would take the blame of 
everything and Mrs. Thorpe should come. 

The telegram reached her when she was by the bedside 
of old Grandma Atkins. Grandma had had a hard pull 
with life, but the fever had left her now, only she was 
very weak. 

“Old bodies like me are best out of the way,” she said, 
when her illness began. “There’s a Heaven of rest surely 
somewhere for them as has worked all their lives without 
stopping.” 

“Certainly,” replied Mrs. Thorpe, as she placed her 
cool hands upon her head. “Your Heaven is here. Grandma, 
and your work is here. There is no age for such as you, 
and there is a big world left for you to comfort.” 

And Grandma had been inspired by these words and 
had taken up life with her old zest again. She was weak, 


72 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


it was true, and needing the power of a stronger mind to 
help her, and it was of her case the doctor first thought 
when Mrs. Thorpe placed Bryan Osborne’s telegram before 
him. 

“You will not think of going?” he said. “You cannot 
be spared, you know.” 

“I must go where God has called me,” she responded. 
“You must carry on the work without me now. You know 
you are able to do it. You have got the vision of the great 
light.” 

It was a good six hours’ journey to the village where 
Penelope was staying, and the time dragged heavily to the 
young wife as she lay with eyes riveted upon the window. 
She had dropped into an uneasy doze, when suddenly a 
sense of rest and peace and freedom from fear stole over 
her, deepening her sleep, filling her dreams with pleasure. 
How long she slept she did not know, but when she opened 
her eyes it was after sunset and Mrs. Thorpe sat by the 
bed. She reached out her hands appealingly. 

“The child,” she said. 

“The child is well,” replied Mrs. Thorpe, “and you have 
now to teach it that God is over all, and so we need not 
fear. If you had your little one beside you at this moment, 
would not you quickly forget all your own hurts to comfort 
and caress it? Would not you soothe it with loving words 
and tender kisses? Well, you must do just the same as if 
you held it now. It has become infected with fear, so take 
it right into your arms and let it know the one who gives 
us life is able to take care of everything. Go to sleep with 
its head upon your breast, assured that God loves your 
little child as much as He loves you.” 

She laid her hands upon her as she spoke, and responsive 
to the tender touch, Penelope smiled back sweetly into her 
face. A beautiful lulling sense of rest had fallen over her 
and in a few minutes she was fast asleep. 

Then Mrs. Thorpe stole softly from the room and went 
downstairs. She found Bryan Osborne anxiously awaiting 
her. 

“I have just half an hour to catch the evening train,” 
she said. 

“But you are not going,” he answered. “You must not. 
The doctor was here just before you came. The child may 
be born any time now.” 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


73 


“And if the child is born,” she replied, “your wife will 
have no need of me. She has fallen asleep with the thought 
upon her soul that all is well. She will awake with that 
same thought. Rest assured that God, who gave her the 
power to create the child, will give her the power to bring 
it into life. Surely you can trust God to take care of what 
He has created?” 

****** 

There was fresh news for the village to discuss at the 
well this morning, and Sarah Emerson smiled to herself 
as she thought it. 

The fever flame was dying down now; there had been 
no fresh cases for a fortnight, and every patient was able 
to sit up. 

“They’re all of ’em better,” said Mrs. Harrison, as she 
washed her brown hands in the clear, fresh water, before 
filling her bucket; “and to think that my little Pearl never 
took it, but is as strong and bonny now as any other child. 
I said to that good lady at the beginning: Tf Pearl should 
be laid down, she’ll just lose all she’s gained.’ And the 
lady, she turned to me that sharp like, and she says: ‘But 
Pearl is not going to be laid down. God did not make her 
well to make her sick again.’ So I said no more then, and 
sure enough she’s kept well all the time, and even wanted 
to take flowers to them that were sick.” 

“It’s been a wonderful work they’ve done,” said Liza 
Hammond, “and Peggy she’s made us open our eyes even 
if the Lord Almighty has not opened hers. She’s been 
backwards and forwards all day over and they say she’s 
just worked like a black — and as for that little Ophelia, 
she’s going to be the smartest child in all the village if we 
don’t look out. Her parents will be wanting her back 
home before long if she goes on in this way. She’s kept 
that house as neat as a pin, and I see her scrubbing down 
the stairs and pulling every weed up out of the garden, and 
cooking Peggfy the best supper you ever tasted in your 
life.” 

“But I knew it was too good to last,” said Sarah Emer- 
son, who had been waiting with her tit-bit till this moment. 
“What will you think now when I tell you that the lady’s 
gone — took the train yesterday at three, and went off quiet 
like without a word to nobody?” 


7A 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


The women stood as if a thunder bolt had fallen at their 
feet. Sarah was more than satisfied with the impression 
she had made. 

“Lord ha’ mercy,” murmured Liza. “What shall we do 
without her?” 

“And poor old Grandma not well yet,’ said Mrs. Hadley. 
“It ain’t like her to go off and leave her at a time like this.” 

“Well, seems to me, she felt she could not last out any 
longer,” Sarah reflected, “and so she went off quiet like, 
without a fuss. I tried to get her reason out of Peggy, but 
Peggy she just puts me off with saying, T’ve double work 
to do without her, so have no time to talk of her affairs.’ 
And then I went ’round to the house and saw Ophelia, but 
bless you, she’s just as cheeky as you please in spite of all 
her training. ‘My misses teaches me to mind my business,’ 
she says to me, ‘and if I drop a thought of other people’s 
business into the soup I’m making, then it won’t be good,’ 
and she shut the door right in my face, and I heard her 
turn the key ’round in the lock as if I’d been a robber.” 

“Well done, Ophelia,” Liza cried. “I shouldn’t ha’ 
thought she’d have had the courage to give a smack like 
that at anyone.” 

“The doctor’s come ’round to her way of thinking, I 
believe,” said Mrs. Harrison. “He was that mad about the 
operation the house would hardly hold him, but now they 
work together like a well-matched team; and did you ever 
see a finer? He’s a handsome man, is Dr. Bailey, hand- 
some as a wax work in a show, and just as still when he 
sits thinking. And she’s a handsome woman, too — the pic- 
ture of a big wax doll.” 

No one smiled at this doubtful compliment. 

Sarah moved on, leaving her bucket behind her. She 
was anxious to carry the news of Mrs. Thorpe’s departure 
to someone who had not yet become acquainted with the 
fact. The doctor was the first one that she met. He had 
lived long enough in the village now to know this woman’s 
propensity for gossip, so he nodded briefly to her and was 
passing on, but she daringly confronted him. 

“You don’t see any fever spots on me, I hope?” she said. 

“I think if you had had any, you would have found them 
out yourself by now,” he answered, “but I am too busy to 
talk where work is not concerned.” 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


75 


Sarah was nothing daunted by the coolness of his 
manner. 

“You will be busy,” she replied. “You’ve lost the lady 
now, I hear. Why was it that she went away so sudden 
like, without a word or good-bye to us, when we all 
respected her so high?” 

“You’ll find her in that cottage, if you want to know,” 
he said, as he walked on. 

Sarah stood with mouth agape, and peeped through the 
open door. There, sure enough, was Mrs. Thorpe, who 
turned to greet her with a smile — a smile which would 
have made a Summer. 

“I did not leave you long, did I?” she asked. “Not long 
enough for you to miss me.” 


u 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER XIV 

There was no need to sit up with anyone tonight. For 
the first time for weeks Mrs. Thorpe turned towards her 
home. 

The light in Herbert Carruther’s cottage was still burn- 
ing, but Herbert himself was leaning over the gate await- 
ing her. They had never met since that eventful day when 
she went to him in his pain and sickness — broke through 
the cloud and let him see the sunshine. 

“Herbert,” she said, pausing gladly. “You are well?” 

“Yes, thank God — and you,” he answered. “Come in; I 
want you to look upon my work.” 

They went up to the studio together. A bright light 
hung from the ceiling, but the artist turned it low and 
drew his easel where the moon could shine full on it. Then 
he lifted the cloth and waited for the effect. Mrs. Thorpe 
stood wrapped in silence. Her eyes were riveted upon the 
canvas. Then she turned joyously towards him and took 
his hands in hers. “You have indeed looked into the eyes 
of Him who healed you,” she said gently; “you have indeed 
seen the vision.” 

“It seemed so long before it came to me,” he said. “Over 
it I knelt, I wept, I bitterly despaired. As He prayed on 
the mountains to His Father; as He prayed at the grave 
of Lazarus, I poured forth my whole soul in supplication. 
I held my arms aloft to get the touch. Like the leper to 
be cleansed, I cried until the power had reached me. Then 
like a lightning fiash the vision came in all its beauty — 
and with the healing fiowing through my veins — breathing 
the very essence of the divine — with His hand resting on 
my own for every stroke, I began my work.” 

“And when He saw the multitude He had compassion on 
them,” she read softly, as she stooped to see the finely 
written words beneath the canvas. 

Up, one above another, right and left, on every side, the 
faces pressed — faces of toilworn men, of wornout women — 
faces of children starved from birth and long before it — 
faces of eager youths, of happy, careless boys, of reasoning 
philosophers, of sufferers worn with pain — faces of every 
kind, yet all with one expression, riveted, intense as the 
faces of those around the rock which Moses struck from 
whence flowed the water meaning life. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


77 


But the glory of the picture lay in the center figure. 
The manly form with strong, young arms outstretched — 
with healing in His eyes and health vibrations in the 
powerful outspread hands. Compassion on His parted lips, 
and the light of a magnetic splendor wrapped around Him. 

“I have dedicated it to the one from whom the power has 
come,” said Herbert; “and each day, as I painted, each day 
as I looked into His eyes, I felt the hands I gave expression 
to, laid within my own, laid with the healing on my chest. 
I felt the breath of life within my lungs, I felt that this 
was but the beginning of my work, and not the end — and I 
knelt at His feet in thankfulness for a life begun afresh — ■ 
for a new and glorious possibility — for a marvelous real- 
ization. And while you worked among the fever patients 
in the village, I felt the healing power surrounding me — 
wrapping me ’round in ether waves, and lighting into life 
upon the canvas. Sometimes the power of that great 
spiritual force became so strong that the creation of my 
brain seemed to take earthly form and walk within our 
very midst. The whole air quivered, thrilled, vibrated 
with this power, and my hand moved only to the inspira- 
tion. I saw a suffering world swayed by it, until the dead 
were raised to life, and right here in our midst we had no 
sickness and no pain — a world of light and love and 
flowers — a world where jealousy lay choked and dead.” 

“Such is the world which we shall get,” she answered, 
“when all have come as strongly into touch as you. When 
we hold within our hands the power of earth and Heaven, 
when we are clothed in the garments of love and freedom, 
we shall walk the earth not as kings and princes, but as 
gods.” 

And she turned and left him and went towards her 
home with a sense of rest and peace deepened by the 
silence of the night, the brilliant moonlight and the velvet 
shadows of the trees. It seemed almost too beautiful to go 
indoors — to go indoors to bed — for the first time for so 
many weeks. 

Peggy was sitting on the steps awaiting her. In her 
little room upstairs Ophelia lay open-eyed, listening to 
every sound. 

Mrs. Thorpe took the woman’s outstretched hands, and 
held them closely in her own. 


78 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


“Has not it all been beautiful, Peggy?” she asked. “We 
have had such a wonderful demonstration over this sick- 
ness, but it has been swept away by the breath of God, 
and the people have arisen to know the truth as they could 
never have known it unless they had passed through the 
fire. We have come out untouched by the flames, Peggy. 
We have taught these poor lone souls a lesson which will 
sink deeper into their hearts than the depths of the sea — 
the lesson that with God all things are possible.” 

“Even to open the eyes of the blind,” said Peggy. 

“Even to open the eyes of the blind,” repeated Mrs. 
Thorpe. “He has been waiting to do it for so long, Peggy, 
but with your hands you have pushed Him back. Now you 
are going to open yourself right to Him. You have proved 
how you could work for Him, forgetting self and criti- 
cism — but He wants you now for a work that is even 
greater — a work that you cannot do without your sight.” 

“I feel Him nearer now than I ever did before,” said 
Peggy. 

“He is nearer,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “He is close beside 
you. Just let Him touch your eyes.” 

Peggy looked upwards to the stars which were half 
hidden from her coming sight by blurs of mist. Then she 
covered her face with her hands and uttered a half fright- 
ened cry. 

“I saw! I saw!” she said. “Oh, I can’t tell you now.” 

Mrs. Thorpe arose and took her hand. “We will go to 
bed, Peggy,” she said, gently. “Don’t try to explain to me 
tonight. In the morning you can tell me all.” 

The morning dawned. Mrs. Thorpe was awakened by a 
loud, exultant cry. A rushing of feet towards her room. 
She was prepared for it, and took the hands of the excited 
woman in her own. 

“The Master has been in the night,” said Peggy. “I 
have seen Him. He has torn the veil of dimness from my 
eyes. I can see — I can see.” 

“I knew He would come tonight,” said Mrs. Thorpe, 
softly. “I sat up through the darkness, realizing with 
every breath I drew that at the break of dawn your 
darkness would break around you for the light of the 
sun, the moonbeams and the stars. I knew when you 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


79 


worked beside me, self-sacrificing your all, caring nothing 
for appearance, giving up for others — I knew the darkness 
could not last. With your own hands you were breaking it 
down and it would never return. And when the morning 
dawned I felt with it the approach of the Master, and I 
fell asleep with the knowledge that He had heard our call.” 

Peggy was weeping, but she quickly dried her eyes. 
There was no time for tears when there was so much to 
see, and joyously she leaned through the window looking on 
a world of light, of sky, of flower.s — a new world into which 
she was to enter afresh with the freshness of a little child. 


80 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER XV 

Peggy was sitting alone in the parlor. She had lighted 
a fire, for there was a touch of Autumn in the air, and 
outside the rain fell heavily. Mrs. Thorpe had been away 
all day, and she was eagerly listening for the return of the 
motor. She had insisted on Ophelia going to bed so that 
she might meet her beloved mistress alone — but all the 
time she was conscious, by the repeated “snuffs” upon the 
stairway, that the girl had not obeyed her orders. 

“You go to bed, Ophelia,” she called for the twentieth 
time. “If you don’t catch a death of cold upon that 
stairway — ” 

“Oh, Peggy,” interrupted Ophelia, “it’s well the missis 
is not there to hear you — catch a death of cold, indeed!” 

Peggy’s laugh over her own blunder assured Ophelia that 
she was not angry, so she ventured a few steps further 
downstairs. 

“I can’t sleep, Peggy,” she continued, “so I got up and 
dressed. I’m scared to death about the missis. She’s not 
got home yet, and I’d bad dreams last night.” 

“Then you’d been thinking bad thoughts before you went 
to sleep,” said Peggy. “The missis says that bad thoughts 
always bring bad dreams.” 

“Not I,” replied Ophelia, venturing from the dark stairs 
into the light room and warming her cold feet at the fire. 
“I never go to bed with bad thoughts now, but I tell you 
I’d rather sweep a room twice over than lie awake trying 
to drive ’em out of my head. I just went to sleep last night 
with my mind crowded with good thoughts. I said to 
myself, T won’t think that Ethel Brown stole the roses 
from the hothouse, although I really know for certain that 
she did, because I saw her coming out with them in her 
hand. And I won’t think that Johnny Linden pulled that 
ugly face at you just to find out if you could see him. 
And I won’t think — ’ ” 

“Now stop with your ‘won’t thinks,’ ” said Peggy, “and 
tell me what you dreamed.” 

“I dreamt I saw the missis’ motor all smashed to bits, 
and she lying in the middle of the road.” 

Peggy, who in spite of fighting against it, had been 
feeling apprehensive all day, rose to her feet and looked 
through the window. 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


81 


“Do you see anything of the motor coming now?” she 
asked. 

“Can’t you see it?” asked Ophelia wickedly, as she 
continued to warm her feet; “you’re always telling me that 
your eyes are as good as mine.” 

It was raining fast. The wind blew hard and the 
darkness was intense. There was no sign of the lights 
of the motor. 

Ophelia slipped into the kitchen, lighted the lantern 
quickly unbolted the back door and, while Peggy still stood 
watching by the window, rushed into the lane. She knew 
the direction in which Mrs. Thorpe would return, and she 
took it. There must have been some delay or she would 
have been home by now. The wind blew hard against her 
little form. The pelting rain had drenched her through. 
The branches of the swasdng trees struck more than once 
against her face. 

“My missis is safe, and nothing can hurt her,” she kept 
repeating to herself, as she fought her way bravely on. 
Then she stopped suddenly. Her little song had ended with 
a jerk as she saw a figure move slowly and stealthily across 
her path. She knew that queer, bent figure well, and she 
swung her lantern up to see his face. 

“Olaf?” she shouted. “My, but you gave me a turn. 
But for my mistress’ teaching I’d have thought it was old 
Mat’s ghost upon my track.” 

Olaf turned sharply ’round at the sound of the voice. He 
had never been an enemy to Ophelia. In his rough way 
he had felt a kind of pity for her many a time, and had 
even once turned to throw a stone at the mother who was 
beating her. But tonight he spoke to her roughly enough, 
and the hand he laid upon her was trembling, but he held 
her with a grip like iron. 

“Hold up the lantern,” he gasped, breathlessly, as he 
rushed into the middle of the road. 

Ophelia was about to follow him when at that moment 
there came the toot-toot and the thud-thud of a motor, and 
the fiash of brilliant lights in the darkness. 

“It’s the missis,” cried Ophelia, nearly losing her head 
in her excitement, and quite forgetting what Olaf had told 
her. 

The motor came speeding swiftly down the lane. What 
could Olaf be doing? He had rushed in front of it. 


82 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


snatched up a huge object in his arms and, dragging it 
aside, had fallen heavily upon it. 

The motor went past like a flash, and in a moment 
Ophelia had realized all. The memory of her dream came 
back to her. 

“Olaf,” she cried, “what did you do?” 

“The lightning struck the tree,” he gasped. “I saw it 
from the window, and — and — I knew she would come back 
this way, and the wreck was sure. I — I couldn’t let it 
happen, Ophelia. The little girl — my little girl — she came 
to her when she was sick. She came to her and brought 
the flowers.” 

****** 

When Mrs. Thorpe was breakfasting early next morning 
the Rev. B. Sugden unexpectedly arrived. Not much con- 
versation had passed between these two, but the congrega- 
tion had noticed something that was different which had 
crept into his sermons. There was less condemnation, 
more love and sympathy; less talk of the wrath of God 
and more of the love of Christ. 

“I came to you about a member of my congregation,” he 
said; “Olaf Guthna, the Norwegian. He had an accident 
last night. I was sent for to his bedside this morning, 
but I found I could do little for him. He only asked for 
you. It seems when the little girl was ill, and he thought 
he was going to lose her, you took some flowers and put 
them by the window, and the child got well. Olaf is a 
superstitious man. He believes that was the cause of the 
child getting better, and I suppose he thinks you can do 
the same for him.” 

“I remember,” said Mrs. Thorpe, gently. “The flowers 
had their message, just as everything God created has. 
The scent of those roses lifted the mind from the cloud of 
sickness into the sweetness of God’s love. They changed 
the thought from death to life, and that was all.” 

“If you care to accompany me,” said the minister, “I have 
my auto at the door.” 

It didn’t take long to reach the wretched little dwelling 
where the suffering man awaited their arrival. His little 
girl stood on the steps. She rushed towards Mrs. Thorpe 
with outstretched arms. 

“The lady in white,” she cried, excitedly. “You came to 
me and brought the flowers.” 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


83 


Olaf was stretched full length upon the bed. His big, 
mysterious eyes spoke volumes. He was breathing with 
difficulty. His hand was resting on his heart. He turned 
to Mrs. Thorpe like a drowning man to the great vesel in 
the water. 

“Olaf, God loves you,” she said, strongly. 

Great tears filled the man’s eyes. He turned his head 
away to hide them. 

“Then why does He want to take me from my little ’un?” 
he asked. 

“He doesn’t want to take you, Olaf. God is not a slave- 
driver to rob the children of their parents. God, who is 
all love, and who wouldn’t desire to crush the smallest 
insect in the grass, has placed his loving arms around 
you. Stretch forth your hands and ask for life and health 
and He will give it. 

If your little child comes to you now and asks for a 
kiss, will you give her a blow? No; you love your little 
girl too well. And just in the same way God, the all-tender 
Father, loves you, too. So if you ask Him for life, will He 
give you death? If you ask Him for health, will He give 
you sickness? Trust Him like your little child trusts you.” 
And Mrs. Thorpe closed her eyes in thanks for an answered 
prayer, and the silence that followed was like a benedic- 
tion. 

The Rev. B. Sugden went home. He was very still all 
day. His wife noticed he was studying deeply. When he 
had gone out, she saw the Bible on the table. It was 
opened at the Master’s promise. “These signs shall follow 
them that believe. They shall lay hands on the sick and 
they shall recover.” 


84 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


CHAPTER XVI 

Two weeks later Mrs. Thorpe came in from the garden 
with a letter in her hand. It bore the foreign postmark 
and Peggy could see by the brightness in her eyes that 
she had news. 

“My country’s call has come for me, Peggy,” she said, 
as she sat down beside her. “I knew I should not receive 
it until my work was finished here. My husband needs my 
help and I must return to give it. I came here with my 
message, and I have delivered it to you. You know the 
truth now, and you must depend upon yourselves to live it, 
and to act it out. While Christ was with His disciples 
they did but little work, but after He had left them they 
went forth with His power within their hands. His teaching 
on their lips.” 

The tears swam to Peggy’s eyes, but she drove them 
forcibly back and smiled. 

“If we cling to the human body, the present personality, 
then we shall miss our friends when they are gone, but if 
we are in thought, in touch, in sight, with spirit alone, we 
can feel no loneliness, for spirit knows no distance, but can 
be close beside us, influencing, directing, uplifting, even 
though seas or worlds separate the body. It is all the 
material v/e are crying out for — the material we are 
clinging to — but when we get close in touch with spirit we 
shall not lose by separation. 

When my husband went to his work in India,” con- 
tinued Mrs. Thorpe, “I felt that there might be many times 
when we could not even commune by letter, but we knew 
in soul we were always as one. He was doing his work and 
I mine, so how could we miss each other? How could we 
be lonely?” 

When the news of Mrs. Thorpe’s coming departure 
reached Ophelia she came rushing into the room like a 
hurricane. 

“Oh, ma’am,” she sobbed, pitifully, flinging her arms 
around her; “you’re not going to leave us. I’ll just die if 
you do, and all the good thoughts in the world won’t keep 
me alive.” 

“No,” replied Mrs. Thorpe, lifting her up and kissing 
the little tear- wet face. “You’re just going to begin to live 
now, Ophelia. You’re just going right out into the world 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


85 


with the biggest basket of kind thought on your arm that 
you can carry. You have brought a lot of sunshine into my 
life, and now you are going to take it into others. 

Do you remember how, when first you came, I could 
hardly drink the cup of tea you brought, me it had all been 
so mixed up with frowns? — well, now I never drink your 
tea but what your smiles smile up at me out of it. I can 
hear the sound of your merry laughter in the very clatter 
of the cups. Now it is time that those parents of yours 
who have given you so much should have a few of these 
smiles in return.” 

“Oh, ma’am,” said Ophelia, beginning to cry very piti- 
fully again, “it’s easy enough to smile when I’m here and 
I’ve got you always beside me, but when I get nothing but 
cracks on the head for everything I do — ” 

“But you must not expect the cracks on the head,” 
laughed Mrs. Thorpe, “for if we go about expecting cracks, 
then we are sure to get them. You must get up each 
morning and dress, repeating, ‘Now I am going to do 
everything I can to make everyone happy today.’ You 
have learned now how much better it is to make people 
happy than unhappy — and if you are always doing your 
best, and throwing out your love to everyone, then you are 
bound to get love back from somewhere. 

You like to read fairy tales, Ophelia, and we can all make 
our lives like the most wonderful fairy tale that you ever 
read if we only try. We should never be without our 
basket of kind thoughts, and so long as we hold to that 
basket no unkind thought can touch us. If a wind happens 
to blow one our way, all we have to do is to pick out our 
little kind thought, and the ugly unkind thought will be 
ashamed of her black dress when she sees the little kind 
thought in her white and gold. 

You have your work to do, Ophelia, and I have mine. At 
present yours is right here. In time to come God may call 
you to other fields, but you must take the work that’s 
nearest now, and when you are prepared for something 
higher, then you will be called to it.” 

“If you were only nearer to me, so that I could run to 
you, it would be easier,” sobbed Ophelia, “but there’s that 
great big water to get over before I could even see your 
face.” 


86 


FHE WOMAN HEALER 


‘‘But each day you can be sending me loving thoughts 
like little parcels full of fruit and flowers, and those 
thoughts will fall about me sweetly as I do my work. Often 
we wonder why we are suddenly so radiantly happy over 
our hardest tasks, and I think it is because some dearly 
loved one is thinking of us at that moment, and we get 
their thought like a telepathic message, and it is just as if 
the window of a very close room in which we had been 
sitting were suddenly thrown open to let in the sunshine, 
the breeze and the scent of the flowers. But those loving 
thoughts must not only be for me, but for all the world. 
You must have enough and to spare for everyone, and to 
go about like Pippa, singing, and bringing gladness into 
every heart. Now dry your eyes, my girlie, and go and 
get me another cup of tea, and drop plenty of smiles into 

it instead of tears." 

****** 

Next Sunday the little village Church was packed to the 
doors, for the minister had given as his subject “The 
Healing Christ." 

Among the so-called gossips of the village there had 
been much talk — and speculation about what he was going 
to say. The cooking of every Sunday dinner was forgotten. 
Every late Saturday nighter turned out of bed at the first 
stroke of the church bell, and simmering with curiosity 
the crowd poured through the open doors of the church. 

The doctor, who always attended services for conven- 
tion’s sake, was in the old family pew. 

Eliza, winking wickedly at her companions, took her 
seat within nudging distance of Peggy. Olaf, with his 
little girl nestling up to him, sat open-mouthed with 
expectancy. Every person but Mrs. Thorpe was as eager 
for what was to come. To her this was only an answer 
to prayer. She knew that her place in the village must be 
supplied, and God would raise up another, now that her 
presence was needed elsewhere. 

When the Rev. Barnaby Sugden entered the pulpit the 
restless throb of uncertainty grew still. A quiet calm set- 
tled over all, as if the very presence of the Christ had 
stepped into the midst. The message was short and simple. 
No more did he seek for lengthy words and condemning 
sentences. He had entered the kindom as a little child. The 
church was filled with a new illumination. When closing the 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


87 


Bible, he said: “And in His name we all go forth to heal 
the sick, to cleanse the leper; yes, and to raise the dead.” 
* !|< * * * * 

The day was glorious when Mrs. .Thorpe set sail. Bright 
sunlight glittered on the brown waters of the Mersey. The 
red funnels of the ship stood out hard and clear against 
the cloudless blue of the sky. Snow-white sea-gulls cleaved 
the air. Wrapped ’round with sunshine, Mrs. Thorpe stood 
upon the deck. There were just a few minutes before the 
last bell sounded. On every hand her friends surrounded 
her. Her thoughts were with them, but it was difficult to 
get a word with each. Ophelia, clinging to her hand till 
the last minute, was smiling bravely through her tears. 
Peggy had put her arms around her. Ophelia now would 
be her special care. 

“We shall have grown so much that you won’t know us 
when you return,” laughed the doctor, as he heartily 
grasped her hand. “Now that the minister has taken up 
your doctrine, we medical men may soon be out of profes- 
sion.” 

“Or into it,” laughed Mrs. Thorpe, merrily. “I have 
only spoken the word; it is for you to work it out.” 

“And Herbert has reached his ideal at last,” said Leval. 
“He has resurrected in more ways than one. He has been 
offered a fabulous price for his picture, but he will not sell 
it. He has given it to the public without money and 
without price.” 

“And great will be his return,” she answered, “because 
he has entered into the power of the one who will open the 
windows of Heaven to pour forth those showers of bless- 
ings.” 

“There’s someone here wants the last handshake,” called 
a voice in the distance, and Bryan Osborne pushed his 
way through the crowd. Then everyone drew back, and 
there was a holy stillness as Penelope, with a warmly 
wrapped white bundle in her arms, came forward. 

“Our little Christ-child,” she whispered softly, as Mrs. 
Thorpe took the baby from her. “But for you he might 
not have been here.” 

The bell sounded at that moment and visitors had to 
leave the deck. Long after the vessel had started Mrs. 


88 


THE WOMAN HEALER 


Thorpe remained upstairs. The weather was far too 
glorious to go indoors. 

The sun’s good-bye was long and lingering — night seemed 
as unwilling to come down on the scene of brightness as a 
tender mother is unwilling to break upon the games of 
her happy children when the time for bed has come. 

The sky changed from sapphire to amber, from amber 
to primrose and gold. Then in regal triumph the great 
red ball dipped into the water, leaving his vermillion track 
behind him with a scattering of purple clouds. 

Darkness fell softly and languidly over the waves, and 
the moon came up big and white in the sky. The air was 
full of the healing frag^rance of the sea. 

The music downstairs ceased. The power of the silence 
fell over the vessel, and as Mrs. Thorpe closed her eyes 
for the blessing, the vision of the one who walked the 
waters rose before her, and out of the ether like the clear 
music of a silver bell, the words fell softly, “Come unto 
Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give 
you rest." 





















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